title: Getting Lost by: Ernaux, Annie published: 2022-09-27 read: 2023-06 preview

Ernaux having won the recent Nobel prize, of course her work needs to be read. And this, I was then surprised to read, is one of her longer works; Ernaux is known for her shorter stories.

Caveat: I read an English translation. I apologise for that laziness.

The book is partly autobiographic, and follows her decades old description of her affair with a Soviet diplomat, back then. Naturally, I will not go to the L’Événement du jeudi cocktail party tomorrow because he could call while I’m out… says it all, I think; how she is crazily dependent on this man. Until the fall of the USSR. Having spoken to him is worse than silence. I realize just how much time there is to fill before I can be with him again. My life is hollowed out by desire and pain.

Their relationship is, almost entirely, carnal: I’ve already forgotten his gestures, and all I want to do is sleep, in tears, because S does not call. 11.45 p.m. He came and stayed five hours. It had been a long time since I’d experienced such perfection, and since we’d been so attuned to each other. Made love, four times, in different ways. (Bedroom, anal sex after many long and slow caresses – downstairs sofa, missionary very tender too – bedroom, so moving: ‘I’m going to put my sperm on your belly’ – the sofa, doggy style, so perfectly in tune.) An infinite need for the other’s body, his presence.” Or, “For the first time, I want to keep a g-string soaked with his sperm under my pillow.”

But, not a pornographic book at all. It’s really about her despair, her inability to write a book for the years that she “suffers” the relationship, that she needs to wait until he calls her again, waiting empty hours in her dependence.

Ernaux is lost in love. Don’t let this happen to you. But probably you know the feeling. I know I do, and, somehow, this was an eye opener for me, on dependence, on how-can-she-be-like-that and then realising one’s own having been there, having seen it.