Déboutonnage [French]

By Renaud-C

Isabelle has just come out of a relationship in which love was pre-programmed and inevitable but, against all expectations, she has ended it. She has left this boy who was her soul mate but for whom she felt no physical desire. She feels guilty for hurting him and failing to love him.
That is when she meets the repulsive, the abject Martin Zuller. Martin has always been covered in spots: it is his identity and the cross he has to bear. He has constructed a defense mechanism against other people's forced compassion and irrepressible disgust. Isabelle and Martin are both eighteen and embarking on a highly competitive two year-course among arrogant, elite students and contemptuous teachers. Isabelle immediately grasps what all the evidence would deny. She tries to overcome her repulsion. Martin avoids her: how can someone as beautiful as her even look at him without shaking? They are both drawn to and repelled by each other.
Spotless is the story of a relationship trying to find its feet and establish itself.
It is about ugliness, an insurmountable ugliness that paralyses other people and puts up a barrier to any form of appeasement or reconciliation. It is about purity, the purity that Martin wishes for every day as he cleanses in front of the mirror, trying to achieve an immaculate, virgin face; and the purity Isabelle is searching for after the failure of her first relationship.


Claire Renaud is 33 years old. She followed the highly competitive "classes pr paratoires" at Louis-le-Grand school, then studied philosophy. She has written several children's books, published by Fleurus.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: French
• ISBN: 2234064112
• ISBN13: 9782234064119
• Release Date: February 2022
• Publisher: Stock
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.74 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.3" x 8.5"