France’s former First Lady Valerie Trierweiler is set to release a tell-all book about her tumultuous relationship with President Francois Hollande, AFP reported.
Valerie Trierweiler, a 49-year-old journalist, was dumped unceremoniously by Francois Hollande in January 2014 after Closer magazine revealed his affair with actress Julie Gayet, and has since remained broadly silent about an event she once said had felt like falling “from a skyscraper”. Sh had all along been secretly writing a book about her years-long relationship with the Socialist leader, which comes out tomorrow and does not “spare” Francois Hollande, according to parliamentary channel LCP which broke the news.
“Everything I write is true,” Valerie Trierweiler writes on the cover of the book, called Thank You For This Moment and unveiled in Paris-Match, a glossy magazine for which she used to be a political reporter and still contributes to.
“At the Elysee [presidential palace], I sometimes felt as if I was on a story. And I have suffered too much from lies to tell lies myself.”
The 320-page book “is a cry of love as well as a slow descent into hell, a plunge into the intimacy of a couple. Two people and nothing more: Valerie and Francois,” Paris-Match writes.
The Elysee said it was “not aware” of the book’s publication.
“So by definition we have not read this book,” a source close to Francois Hollande told AFP.
Valerie Trierweiler met Francois Hollande in the mid-2000s while he was in a relationship with Segolene Royal – herself a former presidential candidate – and the pair began a secret liaison.
Francois Hollande subsequently left Segolene Royal, the mother of his four children, for Valerie Trierweiler who became the de facto first lady of France after he was elected in 2012, despite the fact the pair were not married.
News of Francois Hollande’s affair with 42-year-old Julie Gayet caused shock waves in France in January, and Valerie Trierweiler was hospitalized for a week after Closer magazine published pictures of the president arriving for secret trysts with the actress at a borrowed flat.
Francois Hollande then announced their relationship was over in an 18-word statement that was devoid of regret or remorse for the woman he had described as “the love of my life” in 2010.
“Eighteen words is almost one word for each month we spent together since he was elected,” Valerie Trierweiler told Le Parisien daily in January, describing herself as “more disappointed than hurt”.
According to Paris-Match, this is the first time that a former first lady “really tells the story of nine years of a relationship eroded by jealousy and power … A story of love … and despair”. The weekly – which publishes extracts of the book in an issue that comes out on September 3 in Paris and on September 4 in the rest of France – describes Valerie Trierweiler as a “passionate lover, possessive, mad about this man whom she admires, who makes her laugh and delightfully destabilizes her”.
The book could also prove an embarrassment for President Francois Hollande, whose approval ratings are at a record low.
However, the memoir will not be the first by a former first lady.
Nicolas Sarkozy’s ex-wife Cecilia Attias, who was a key adviser in his successful 2007 campaign but divorced him soon after, also published an autobiography last year, which sold tens of thousands of copies.
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