The young man

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The young man

Title:

The young man

Author:

Ernaux, Annie, 1940- author.

Strayer, Alison L., translator.

Summary:

The Young Man is Annie Ernaux’s account of her passionate love affair with A., a man some 30 years younger, when she was in her fifties. The relationship pulls her back to memories of her own youth and at the same time leaves her feeling ageless, outside of time— together with a sense that she is living her life backwards. Amidst talk of having a child together, she feels time running its course, and menopause approaching. The Young Man recalls Ernaux as the “scandalous girl” she once was, but is composed with the mastery and the self-assurance she has achieved across decades of writing. -- Amazon.

General Note:

Originally published as Jeune homme.

Physical Description:

62 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm

Genre:

Personal narratives.

Personal Subject:

Ernaux, Annie, 1940-

Subject Term:

Authors, French -- 20th century -- Biography.

Authors, French -- 21st century -- Biography.

Man-woman relationships.

Author(s):

Strayer, Alison L.,

Publisher:

Seven Stories Press,

Publication Date:

2023

2022

ISBN:

9781644213209

Publication Information:

New York, NY : Seven Stories Press, 2023.

Call Number:

306.7 ERNAUX

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Item Barcode	Collection	Call Number	Status	Item Holds
33607003675280	New Adult Nonfiction	306.7 ERNAUX	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

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Summary

WINNER OF THE 2022 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE

Annie Ernaux's most recent book, dazzling and breathtaking, published in France in 2022, is about her affair with a man 30 years her junior.

"A sublime book." -Olivia de Lamberterie, Elle

"Once again the work of the writer Annie Ernaux appears as both a rigorous study of life and an experiment. These fragments of living, however evanescent, are precious, irreplaceable, like a skin that never fades." -Caroline Montpetit in Le Devoir

The Young Man is Annie Ernaux's account of her passionate love affair with A., a man some 30 years younger, when she was in her fifties. The relationship pulls her back to memories of her own youth and at the same time leaves her feeling ageless, outside of time- together with a sense that she is living her life backwards.

Amidst talk of having a child together, she feels time running its course, and menopause approaching. The Young Man recalls Ernaux as the "scandalous girl" she once was, but is composed with the mastery and the self-assurance she has achieved across decades of writing. It was first published in France in 2022.

Author Notes

Annie Ernaux was born in 1940 in Normandy. She is the winner of numerous prizes including the Prix Renaudot. Her "A Woman's Story", "A Man's Place", and "Simple Passion" were all "New York Times" Notable Books. "A Woman's Story" was also a "Los Angeles Times" Fiction Prize finalist and "A Man's Place" was a French-American Foundation Award finalist. Her Previous book "Shame", was named a Best Book of 1998 by "Publishers Weekly". Her books are taught in schools throughout France as contemporary classics. Ernaux lives outside Paris.

(Bowker Author Biography)

Reviews (1)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Nobel Prize winner Ernaux (The Years) recounts her yearlong affair with a man three decades her junior in this slim yet stunning memoir. After the man, a student referred to here only as "A," made several attempts to contact Ernaux about her work, she began seeing and sleeping with him in 1998, when he was 24 and she was 54. Initially trepidatious, Ernaux quickly became enchanted by the ways A. helped her "travel through all the ages of life," stirring memories of her own time as a student and reminding her of the working-class roots she'd learned to weed out in adulthood. Remarkably clear-eyed about the relationship's pitfalls and pleasures, Ernaux shares, in fragments, the ways it provoked within her both a sense of righteousness ("Any fifty-something guy could carry on openly with a woman obviously not his daughter without arousing disapproval") and sadness ("More and more it seemed to me that I could continue to accumulate images, experiences, years, and no longer feel anything but repetition itself"). Eventually, the sadness took over, and Ernaux ended their relationship in the fall of 1999, "happy to be entering the third millennium alone and free." Throughout, she suffuses even simple moments--a brasserie lunch, a glimpse out of the window at her lover's house--with a kind of magic, seamlessly layering the perspectives of her current and former selves. The result is a poignant and essential addition to Ernaux's oeuvre. (Sept.)