Getting Lost
WINNER OF THE 2022 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE
2022 NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK
The diary of one of France’s most important, award-winning writers during the year she had a passionate and secret love affair with a Russian diplomat.
Getting Lost is the diary Annie Ernaux kept during the year and a half she had a secret love affair with a younger, married man, a Russian diplomat. Her novel, Simple Passion, was based on this affair, but here her writing is immediate, unfiltered.
In these diaries it is 1989 and Annie is divorced with two grown sons, living outside of Paris and nearing fifty. Her lover escapes the city to see her there and Ernaux seems to survive only in expectation of these encounters, saying “his desire for me is the only thing I can be sure of.” She cannot write, she trudges distractedly through her various other commitments in the world, she awaits his next call; she lives only to feel desire and for the next rendezvous. When he is gone and the desire has faded, she feels that she is a step closer to death.
Lauded for her spare prose, Ernaux here removes all artifice, her writing pared down to its most naked and vulnerable. Getting Lost is as strong a book as any that she has written, a haunting, desperate view of strong and successful woman who seduces a man only to lose herself in love and desire.
2022 NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK
The diary of one of France’s most important, award-winning writers during the year she had a passionate and secret love affair with a Russian diplomat.
Getting Lost is the diary Annie Ernaux kept during the year and a half she had a secret love affair with a younger, married man, a Russian diplomat. Her novel, Simple Passion, was based on this affair, but here her writing is immediate, unfiltered.
In these diaries it is 1989 and Annie is divorced with two grown sons, living outside of Paris and nearing fifty. Her lover escapes the city to see her there and Ernaux seems to survive only in expectation of these encounters, saying “his desire for me is the only thing I can be sure of.” She cannot write, she trudges distractedly through her various other commitments in the world, she awaits his next call; she lives only to feel desire and for the next rendezvous. When he is gone and the desire has faded, she feels that she is a step closer to death.
Lauded for her spare prose, Ernaux here removes all artifice, her writing pared down to its most naked and vulnerable. Getting Lost is as strong a book as any that she has written, a haunting, desperate view of strong and successful woman who seduces a man only to lose herself in love and desire.
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Community Reviews
⭐️⭐️⭐️ / 3 stars
Not quite what I expected though intriguing nonetheless. I selected this audiobook when I noticed the Nobel Prize 2022 sticker and that it was available for review via NetGalley.
To break it down in simplest terms it's the diary entries of this French author in her late forties about her explicit hookups with a married, young Russian diplomat over the course of about a year in 1989.
Annie holds nothing back as she tells of her torrid love affair. The highs of immensely pleasurable sex in every position and form imaginable, along with the emotional turmoil she experienced as she desperately awaited their next tryst.
I enjoyed the audio narration and will consider reading other works by this 2022 Nobel Prize recipient to see what garnered such recognition.
Special thanks to NetGalley, Dreamscape Media, and the author for this complimentary Audiobook Listening Copy in exchange for an honest review.
Not quite what I expected though intriguing nonetheless. I selected this audiobook when I noticed the Nobel Prize 2022 sticker and that it was available for review via NetGalley.
To break it down in simplest terms it's the diary entries of this French author in her late forties about her explicit hookups with a married, young Russian diplomat over the course of about a year in 1989.
Annie holds nothing back as she tells of her torrid love affair. The highs of immensely pleasurable sex in every position and form imaginable, along with the emotional turmoil she experienced as she desperately awaited their next tryst.
I enjoyed the audio narration and will consider reading other works by this 2022 Nobel Prize recipient to see what garnered such recognition.
Special thanks to NetGalley, Dreamscape Media, and the author for this complimentary Audiobook Listening Copy in exchange for an honest review.
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