She-Wolves is written in the first person, in the voice of a woman, Adèle. Thirty years old, she is still under the sway of her childhood.
Close to Adèle, we see her husband, her lover, her best friend, and, in the past, her brother and mother. All around her swirls a city that is a lot like today’s Paris. The novel is peopled with a great number of bit characters passing through, sometimes very fleetingly.
The story tells about Adèle’s gift. Her intuition for bodies. Ever since childhood, she has known what they were like beneath their clothes; she knows their smell, the texture of their skin, their varicose veins. It all started with her boredom and her habit of watching the passers-by in the small town in eastern France where she grew up. Her gift “takes” on most bodies. But some resist. Those are the ones that Adèle will set herself to describing, as though she were compelled to expose their secrets.

She-Wolves moves us with its sensual, lyrical writing. Fabienne Jacob’s style sticks very close to stream of consciousness, painting a magnificent portrait of Adèle: from adolescent to adult woman, whose body – apprehended here – is, all by itself, a sort of essence of the human condition.

A young woman, Adèle, describes the world around her. Since her childhood, she has been fascinated with bodies. Men’s, women’s, children’s, adults’ and old people’s. Since childhood, she has had this gift: recognizing the animality animal beneath human appearances.