The Young Man

A sublime book. Elle

"That Ernaux can do so much  The Young Man tackles love, aging, desire, loss, misogyny, class and death in such a small space is clearly the hallmark of a writer who has honed her craft to be razor sharp. It cuts to the bone." Jessica Ferri, The Washington Post

The major pleasure in reading this book and it is a major pleasure comes not so much from gasping over sensual details but from savoring Ernaux s sentences and the searing clarity of her thinking. It isn t just that she avoids sentimentality, though she does that, too. It s that the author can (and does) analyze all kinds of intersecting threads aging, class, desire, regret without a sense of shame or an impulse to sugarcoat any of the truths she uncovered during her time with A. . . . A crucial addition to Ernaux s oeuvre. Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"A romance on its face, The Young Man gathers singularity and texture as an account of manifold transits: between youth and age, living and dying, in and out of passion, passing through menopause, and from Ernaux s impoverished beginnings through her ascension into the literary bourgeoisie." Bookforum

"Gripping. . . . Nobel prize winning writer Annie Ernaux s recounts her fervent love affair with A., a man 30 years her junior." Nylon

"In the sensitive hands of Annie Ernaux and her translator Alison L. Strayer, a slim and seemingly salacious story of a woman s love affair with a much younger man transforms into a profound exploration of power and domination, of reliving through writing, and of how passion elevates us to a kind of agelessness." Words Without Borders

"A meditation on a dalliance that made [French author and 2022 Nobel Prize winner Annie Ernaux] think differently about love, time, and aging." TIME magazine, Most Anticipated Books for Fall 2023

The Young Man is more than the story of an affair. It s an intense re-examination of the past. . . . [Ernaux's] memoirs ask us to cultivate different expectations for narrative, and perhaps for life: to seek not novelty but rather the familiar, which surprises in its own way." Maggie Doherty, The New Republic

"Prevalent in [Ernaux's] work are acts of remembering how memory is not a distant, unreachable thing but something that stalks the present. Reliving those wild days with a younger man triggers a meditation on age and mortality." The Guardian

"In lean prose, [Ernaux] moves from description to scrutiny with accuracy. She writes the way the body recalibrates the past. . . .  It is a story that compels us to revisit our own past, and to wonder if we share Ernaux s unflinching clarity about recognizing the dial of life." World Literature Today

"Nobel Prize winner Ernaux recounts her yearlong affair with a man three decades her junior in this slim yet stunning memoir. . . . 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. . . and sadness. . . . The result is a poignant and essential addition to Ernaux s oeuvre." Publishers Weekly, starred review

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, Le Devoir

"[Annie Ernaux] ever attentive to the dynamics of memory, the dissolution of sex, and the process of writing knows that this timeless quality isn t, and can t be, quite the same as seeing time flow in reverse."  Asymptote Journal