SOURCE: Hulse, Michael. “Brute Encounters.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4503 (21-27 July 1989): 802.

In the following review, Hulse discusses the satiric elements and disturbing subject matter of Lust.

The main characters in Elfriede Jelinek's new novel Lust are the managing director of an Austrian paper-mill and his much-abused wife Gerti. The man is referred to as “der Direktor”, much as one might refer to “der Führer”; his attitude to women matches that expressed in Hitler's table talk. Hermann is Schiller's “Ewig-Gestrige” with a vengeance, a man whose life is spent in the pursuit of power.

His exploitation of Gerti's body is rendered in formidably horrible terms. In the age of AIDS, the Direktor has reluctantly decided that gratification begins at home, and he uses his passive wife to satisfy his needs. There is nothing mutual about this satisfaction: Gerti is merely a machine for fornication, and she no longer...