Former First Lady of France Colors in Details of an Affair

Paris: Now she has her say.

The jilted lover of President Francois Hollande of France has written a tell-all book about her days as France's onetime unofficial first lady and of her version of events that led the couple to separate after the president was exposed as having an affair by a French gossip magazine.

The book by Valerie Trierweiler, 49, who separated from Hollande in January, describes how news of the affair pushed her to the edge. She acknowledges that she "cracked" and attempted suicide by trying to overdose on sleeping pills when she learned of Hollande's affair with an actress, Julie Gayet.

While the book, "Thank You for This Moment," in many ways merely confirms the outlines of an episode much speculated about in the French news media, it is the first time that a sitting French president has been the object of a "kiss and tell" book. Its lurid details, and sometimes belittling tone toward Hollande, have provoked both sensation and some criticism here after excerpts were published by the magazine Paris Match before the book's official release Thursday.

Many commentators described it as an act of revenge from a humiliated woman that would further tarnish the image of Hollande, whose popularity is already at record lows. A spokesman for the Elysee Palace said he did not wish to comment.

After learning of the affair, Trierweiler, a longtime journalist for Paris Match, had an "emotional collapse," according to her spokesman at the time, and spent more than a week in a hospital.

"The information about Julie Gayet is top of the morning news," Trierweiler wrote in her first public account of her immediate reaction to the reports that Hollande, 59, had multiple liaisons with Gayet, escaping from the presidential palace disguised in a helmet on his scooter.

"I've had enough. I can't listen to this anymore," she wrote. "I run into the bathroom. I grab the little plastic bag which contains sleeping pills. Francois followed me. He tries to snatch the bag out of my hand. I ran into the room. He gets hold of the bag, and it rips. Pills fall all over the bed and the floor. I get hold of some of them. I swallow what I can."

Olivier Royant, the chief editor of Paris Match, said the book had been published in great secrecy and acknowledged that he was "dumbfounded" when he found out that she had dared to write it. "In France, political life is sacred," Royant said.

The book drew a barrage of criticism for revealing secrets about the president, whose office embodies the nation and is rarefied like that of a monarch. Renaud Dely, the managing editor of the magazine Nouvel Observateur, said the book reflected "indecent behavior."

"She challenged the presidential function," Dely said in a video. "The consequences of that can be terrible."

Hollande, who has never married, was involved for many years with Segolene Royal, a former presidential candidate for his Socialist Party. The two have four children together. He eventually left her for Trierweiler, and they were together for nine years.

Trierweiler, a twice-divorced mother of three who grew up modestly in a housing project in Angers, in western France, never gained popularity in France, and was often vilified for her seeming aloofness.

During the legislative campaign in 2012, Trierweiler, angered at Hollande's public support for Royal, sent a message effectively endorsing Royal's opponent.

She was described by a former chief editor of Le Monde, Laurent Greilsamer, in his book "La Favorite," as "unconventional, imperial, amorous, explosive, unpredictable. And clearly dangerous."