Constance Debré Knihy

The daughter of an illustrious French family whose members include a former Prime Minister, a model, and a journalist, Constance Debré abandoned her marriage and legal career in 2015 to write full-time and begin a relationship with a woman. Her transformation from affluent career woman to broke single lesbian was chronicled in her 2018 novel 'Play boy', praised by Virginie Despentes for its writing that is at once "flippant and consumed by anxiety." In 'Love Me Tender', writing graphically about sex, rupture, longing, and despair, Debré deals courageously with love in its many forms, reframing what it means to be a mother beyond conventional expectations

When she kisses a woman for the first time, the protagonist of "Playboy" is hesitant and unsure. However, with each subsequent kiss, she increasingly embraces her new life. After decades of marriage and raising her son, she leaves behind the facade of family life. With every piece of furniture she discards and every shirt she throws away, she sheds the layers of her heterosexual conditioning. She embarks on relationships with women who could not be more different from one another, learns to love in new ways, and reevaluates her upbringing in a prestigious French family as the child of two impoverished drug addicts. She reflects on her career as a criminal defense attorney and her marriage to her ex-husband, ultimately discovering a new physicality: the body as a means of escaping societal norms and as a medium for sensations, allowing her to both give and receive pleasure. With linguistic power and disarming honesty, Constance Debré challenges taboos surrounding money, marriage, sex, desire, and domesticity.

"Un meurtre c'est fait pour que quelque chose s'arrête. Est-ce que c'est possible que les choses s'arrêtent, que ce ne soit pas toujours le même aplat de tout, sur le même ton, à la même vitesse qui vous avale, irrespirable, le souffle court, ne plus avoir d'oxygène au cerveau à force, est-ce que c'est possible que tout le monde se taise, que le bébé se taise, que sa mère se taise, que le dealer se taise, que les flics se taisent, que les juges se taisent, que tous ils se taisent. Qu'ils fassent ce qu'ils veulent de lui, il leur donne son corps, mais qu'il puisse se taire, qu'ils le laissent ne plus répondre."