QUESTIONED during an in­t­er­view a few years ago as to which was his favourite literary work, Francois Hollande had unhesitatingly mentioned The Essays by Michel de Montaigne. Today it would be a bit superfluous to ask him which book he detests most.

Valerie Trierweiler’s Thank You for this Moment provoked an earthquake in France hardly two weeks ago and the tremors are far from dying down any soon. The book is loved and hated, depending on which camp the reader belongs to, but within three days of its release on Sept 4, 270,000 copies were sold and the frenzy is far from over.

The event comes at a bad moment for Hollande. His popularity ratings are down to 13 per cent, the worst ever for a French President; more than 65 per cent of the voters who had brought him to power in 2012 say they do not want Hollande to be a candidate for re-election in 2017.

Adding to the disastrous state the French economy finds itself in today, not to speak of the rising unemployment and zero growth rate, are political scandals that smear the ruling party’s image. In less than three years the cabinet had to be reshuffled as many times and the latest cause of public opprobrium is the revelation that the Secretary for Economy Thomas Thevenoud has not paid his income tax for the past many years. He was fired from his post and is likely to be expelled from his National Assembly seat in the coming days.

But, to get back to the oeuvre by the former First Lady (or former First Girlfriend, if you prefer), its preparation was a well-kept secret that was described in an astonishing reportage by a French TV network showing satellite images of a small German town where the manuscript was printed, carried in trucks during night’s darkness and brought to the publisher’s address in Paris before daybreak.

To give her credit, Valerie Trierweiler writes professionally. She was a reporter at the Paris Match long before she met Hollande and never gave up the job even when she lived at the Elysee Palace for a year. She went back to the magazine after she was unceremoniously fired by Hollande following the revelation earlier this year of his secret love affair with actress Julie Gayet.

Thank You for this Moment describes in detail the seven years Trierweiler lived with Hollande. Her portrayal of him is that of a coldly cynical and ambitious man obsessed with power and stubbornly contemptuous of traditional values like religion, marriage and family.

These qualities of the French president were in fact already mentioned in a series of interviews aired by a French TV channel a few months ago in which some close friends of Hollande had confirmed them, but his depiction in Trierweiler’s book as a man who abhors the working classes has shocked and angered many.

“His election campaign brought him out as the enemy of the rich, but the fact is he cannot stand the poor,” the author says. At one point she recounts the evening she took him to meet her working-class family in their modest lodging. “He appeared bored to death,” she recalls. “He would have preferred to dine with sophisticated Parisian friends in a restaurant, not with my poor family members in their home.”

Back from the dinner he told her: “All those people aren’t very chic, are they?”

Trierweiler reveals the president’s description of the poor as “the toothless”. A number of commentators believe her allegation of Hollande being a liar could hold true in the sense that no man would be capable of continuing three simultaneous relationships — with Segolene Royal, the mother of his four children, Valerie Trierweiler and Julie Gayet — unless he invents stories to keep them at peace.

Her account of their one year together at the Elysee Palace is full of unexpected shocks. At one occasion she says he could be cruelly dismissive of her whenever he felt like it, as it happened the night when she took a few extra minutes getting ready for dinner. “It takes you a lot of time making yourself pretty, doesn’t it?” he commented, “but then, what else are you there for!”

Elucidating her reasons for writing the book, Trierweiler states in the very first few pages she had to face such a spate of untruths in the media following her exit from the Elysee Palace that she decided to put everything in clear before the public. “The one who was caught for his misdemeanours was President Francois Hollande, but it was I who had to pay the heavy price. I had to explain what really happened.”

Another gory detail which has raised quite a few eyebrows is Trierweiler’s accusation that she was hospitalised after her split and was given, upon Hollande’s orders, high doses of tranquilisers in order to keep her in bed and out of his way.

Criticism from Socialists was normal and expected but, strangely enough, some feminist groups are insisting the account of a woman falling to pieces at the discovery of her man having a mistress should never have been allowed to be written.

The publisher says when Valerie Trierweiler decided to write her book some six months ago, she pulled out her internet connection and stopped exchanging emails or even phone messages in order not to be influenced by anyone:

“She concentrated exclusively on telling us what happened, where and how. Saying a book should never have been written sounds a bit bizarre in a democracy such as ours.”

The writer is a journalist based in Paris.

ZafMasud@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, September 14th, 2014