A Hymn to Life: Shame Has to Change Sides by Gisèle Pelicot
Published by Penguin Press
Publication date: February 17, 2026
Genres: Book Clubs, Debut, Non-fiction, Crime, Memoir
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Gisèle Pelicot is the French woman whose husband of 50 years spent the last decade drugging and raping her and inviting strangers to repeatedly do the same while he recorded it. All of which she recounts in her memoir A Hymn to Life because this woman, who survived years of degradation and brutality without any memory of it, had the strength to confront it in graphic detail via the thousands of photos and videos her husband made. Materials that were used by both the prosecution and the defense in the trials against her husband and the 51 men who were charged with assaulting her. Not only that, but she appeared in court every day, testified, and insisted that the trial be made public.
I was aware of the Pelicot crime and trial, but still started crying while listening to the opening pages of A Hymn to Life. It is the event horizon where Gisèle balances in the comfort of her home and quiet life before being pulled into the black hole of her husband’s sadistic crimes. That point when she still believed that while their life together hadn’t been easy, she and her husband had made it through the difficult times and had a good marriage. And then the call from the police and beginning of a nightmare that reduces to ash not just Gisele, but their three adult children as well. Suddenly, there was a reason for her increasing physical and psychological ailments; what she had come to believe must be a brain tumor and impending death. An option she would come to wish was accurate rather than having to face the unbearable truth that everything in her marriage was a lie.
I was slowly beginning to put two and two together, but mostly I had the peculiar feeling of being inside an enormous shredder. My children had lives to go back to. I had nothing.
This is difficult, emotional reading. I cried with shock and sorrow for Gisèle’s pain and raged against the indignities she endured at trial as the defense sought to humiliate her to save their clients’ hides. Listening to the audiobook of A Hymn to Life, stunningly narrated by Emma Thompson, heightened every emotion. The richness and depth of her voice, combined with her perfectly calibrated performance, made it feel less like listening to a memoir than bearing witness to it.
Which is why I chose to read something so dark. Because I owed, we owe Gisèle that. The burden of the shame she was made to feel should not be hers alone, but all of ours. For the fact that we live in a world where rape is an act of entitlement for certain men, but always brings shame to the woman. That women bear any of the burden for this crime is an indictment on our society, yet the victim blaming continues. The reality is still ugly, but amid the grotesque and heart-rending, A Hymn to Life reveals the extraordinary strength of a woman determined to reclaim her life. In doing so, Gisèle becomes a powerful beacon of hope for survivors of sexual assault everywhere.
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