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Staff Reviews
This is a short fictionalized account of Ernaux’s affair with a married man, but instead of talking explicitly about the affair itself, she recounts her obsessive thoughts between each encounter.
— Lexi
When a crush doesn't text back, some of us post way too much on Instagram, or craft strongly worded vague tweets. In Annie Ernaux's case, she wrote an entire book about it. Ernaux's prose is angry, sharp enough to cut glass, yet at the center of this novel is a soft, lonely person who just wants to be loved. Ernaux is one of my favorite writers, and this is an excellent place to start for those just now discovering the absolute gift that is her work.
— Peter
She's so real for this.
— Phoenix
Description
In her spare, stark style, Annie Ernaux documents the desires and indignities of a human heart ensnared in an all-consuming passion. Blurring the line between fact and fiction, an unnamed narrator attempts to plot the emotional and physical course of her two-year relationship with a married foreigner where every word, event, and person either provides a connection with her beloved or is subject to her cold indifference. With courage and exactitude, she seeks the truth behind an existence lived entirely for someone else, and, in the pieces of its aftermath, she is able to find it.
