Love Annie Ernaux's books. This was the first one I listened to and since it's mostly first person memoir style it was easy to follow and enjoyable to listen to. Narration was great; how I imagined an Ernaux book to sound. Thank you!

"Only beginnings are truly beautiful."
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"I love him with all my emptiness."
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"Why do I always get attached to the vainest of men?"
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"All I ever wanted was love. And literature."
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"I am both a mother and a hore. I've always liked to play all the roles."
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"The last planned meeting has the beauty of things that are ending."
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"I am still as powerless as ever in the face of desire."
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"In the end there is something adventurous about this painful waiting. Something... full."
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"I live in a state of anesthetized pain."
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"It's obvious that nothing is more desirable and dangerous than losing the sense of self."
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"In four years I will have more wrinkles. I will be going through menopause. And he, at 40, will be in his prime. "You've given me a lot. A lot!", he says."

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Thank you @dreamscape_media and @netgalley for granting me access to the Advanced Listening Copy in exchange for my honest review!

Let me start by saying that Getting Lost and The Young Man are the only two works by Annie Ernaux that I have read. So I have nothing to compare them to. I originally intended to listen to The Year (which is considered to be her masterpeace) on audio, but alas, it did not work for me. Perhaps because it was on audio. I could not focus at all and it sounded like a bunch of random thoughts to me which I was struggling to connect. I will definitely have to revisit The Years in print.

I also have not read (or listened to) Simple Passion, which perhaps I should have prior to listening to Getting Lost.

For those of you who don't know, Annie Ernaux won the Nobel Prize for Literature last year. Early on in her career Ernaux wrote autobiographical fiction, lately replacing it almost entirely with memoirs. On the Nobel Prize website it says that she was awarded an award "for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory”. This is such an accurate description of her work that it is really hard to truly add anything original to it.

Getting Lost is describing Ernaux's affair with S, married Russian diplomat, 13 years her younger. After he left France, Ernaux wrote a book about the affair titled Simple Passion. But while Simple Passion is categorized as an autobiographical fiction, Getting Lost is a collection of unfiltered diary entries from the time of the affair. In the beginning of the book Ernaux writes: "I perceived there was a "truth" in those pages that differed from the one to be found in Simple Passion - something raw and dark, without salvation, a kind of oblation. I thought that this, too, should be brought to light. I neither altered nor removed any part of the original text while typing it into the computer. For me, words set down on paper to capture the thoughts and sensations of a given moment are as irreversible as time - are time itself".

So first of all let me mention that I am in awe of the quality of writing in these "simple diary entries' '. Rest assured that if my journal ever got published the readers would die. Either of laughter or boredom - you pick! The fact that Ernaux can record her thoughts and describe her feelings in such eloquent and often entertaining manner, even in the moments if at most despair and self loathing is incredible.

And....I agree with the Nobel Prize website - it does take a lot of courage to put it out like that. To let the world see your most intimate world, your darkest moments, your weaknesses and secret desires - all of it! That's impressive, and I honestly don't think I could do that.

There is nothing particularly unusual in the subject matter itself. There is a typical pattern of indifference, followed by the momentouse passion, that due to circumstances (namely S moving to France) turned into a full blown obsession. What follows next is a description of the torturous cycle of uncertainty and waiting, followed by the bliss of the few hours (always on his terms!), followed by overwhelming fatigue and the feeling of emptiness, and then waiting again. As the waiting periods become longer and the rendezvous with S start following a rather predictable pattern the author falls into the pit of despair, asking herself again and again why is she doing doing this to herself, only to eventually fall back into the "hoping for just one more call, just one more meeting" behavior.

This pattern in itself is not that unusual, and many of us have been through this at least once in a lifetime (and some had the bad fortune to fall into this pattern again and again). It is rather the manner in which this doomed "love story" is presented that is so fascinating. Ernaux spares no details. In return the reader is simultaneously made to feel uneasy and cannot stop listening to the author's ordeal! The experience of listening to Getting Lost felt a bit self destructive to be honest. Even though Ernaux is the one engaging in self destruction.

There is an astute insight too: the author mentions more than once that she does not even like S as a person. She notes his lack of intellect, his boastfulness, and vanity. She is dismayed at his fascination with Stalin, homophobia, and antisemitism. Even his fashion choices, and the preference for "big, expensive cars" annoys her. But most importantly she sees with the enviable clarity that he is treating her as a "piece of ass", and is only interested in her because she is a "famous writer". Likewise she is fully aware that she is only attracted to him because of his youth and because he is "Soviet", and by the virtue of being "Soviet" is "mysterious" and "unattainable".

And yet instead of breaking it off after a few fun rendezvous, Earnaux makes the decision to get completely lost in this affair, and to experience passion in its rawest, most primal form. Even at the risk of being hurt.

The book is repetitive. This is hardly surprising: the nature of such "doomed" affairs is typically very cyclical, and also well, because if you've ever kept a journal you know that we tend to write about the same things over and over again! In addition to her affair with S, Ernaux recounts her memories of the prior affairs, finding similarities in her behavior. She also reminisces about traumatic events in her life, such as the loss of her parents, getting an abortion, and her failed marriage and subsequent divorce. There are many musings about literature and the role that it played in the author's life, and some cool descriptions of travel - especially delightfull is the author's visit to Florence at the very end!

All in all despite a rather torturous experience I am glad that I have decided to listen to this book! The narrator, Tavia Gilbert, is fantastic (I fell in love with her while listening to The Eighth Life earlier this year!) But I must say that Ernaux's books seem to almost demand some highlighting and note taking! There are just so many quotable moments! I kept pausing the audio and taking notes which makes me think that her books really are better experienced in print.

This is the diary of one of France's most important writers, detailing her secret and passionate romance with a younger, married, Russian diplomat. This affair consumes her, she cannot work, and she lives for his next contact. She is vulnerable and honest in her writing and also self analytical. Her passion comes through her writing as does her anguish. I listened to the audio and it was superb.

I tried really hard to listen to this audiobook, but absolutely nothing happened. She just lusts after a married man. And yes- this is her uncensored journal- but I just have no interest in reading it. DNF.

Thank you to Netgalley for an audiobook to review.

An intimate window into a forbidden world: the author's uncensored diaries recounting her love affair with a younger Russian diplomat. This translation offers the reader a raw account of a chaotic infatuation, at times in excessive pages, The author throws the most intimate physical encounters at the reader with an aggressive nonchalance. This reader couldn't help but feel the second-hand anxiety that stalked the author as she awaited the inevitable end of the consuming romance. The female protagonist consumed by desire and trying to face her fear that her own desirability has fast-approaching expiration date is a necessary social commentary that, had it been penned by a man, would be far less interesting or jolting.

Annie Ernaux had an affair with a Russian diplomat in the late 1980s and early 90s. He is identified only as “S” in her diary though it is apparently easy to discover who he is for those willing to go digging. Some 30 years later Ernaux could care less, as evidenced by Getting Lost, her now published diary.

Getting Lost is a very intimate window into their relationship and Ernaux’s thoughts around it. She writes of her preoccupation with S, their times together, her desires, fears, suspicions and wishes with abandon. While (mostly) not graphic, the details are the sort one usually only shares with a close friend. Some things found here would not even be shared then (such as her wish to keep a particular token of his close). For Annie and her lover, there are a lot of firsts and a lot of sexual experimentation. There are also moments that made me laugh out loud, such as when she contemplates his excitement at getting a new car. She knows he’ll have less time for her because of it and suddenly exclaims, “Who am I getting this suntan for!?” He also never removes his socks. She brings this up periodically throughout their relationship, even having a nightmare about his removing them for another woman.

Despite these rare funny moments, I found Getting Lost somewhat tedious, especially the first half. There is a lot of “desire” and “suffering.” She uses those words excessively. Excessively! All she wants is to be with him and when he leaves, she suffers. When he doesn’t call, she suffers. When they’ve made plans to meet up, she suffers in anticipation. There’s a lot of suffering because she desires him so much. The second half picks up in that she does and thinks about things other than S and her desirous suffering. There’s a little more variety in her internal life.

I listened to the audiobook of the English translation of Getting Lost so, while Ernaux made no changes to published version of her original diary, I still experienced her memories through two filters – first the translator, Alison L. Strayer’s understanding of the original French, then the narrator, Tavia Gilbert’s performance of the English. However the original words came across to Ernaux’s audience, the earnest yet practical voice of Gilbert paired with the straightforward text had a similar flavour to me as a Diane Lane movie from the early 2000s. Erneaux’s 40-year-old self presents as a practical dreamer; her wishes and desires rooted within reality. Her dreaming is grounded. She understands the limitations of their relationship, as well as his faults and foibles. She also recognizes her own weaknesses and (possibly) gains a better sense of herself because of the affair.

For those who have read Simple Passion, which is based on Ernaux’s time with S, Getting Lost would be a fun, enlightening read. For those who liked Diane Lane’s romances from 20 years back (I’m thinking some kind of combination of Must Love Dogs, Night in Rodanthe, and Under the Tuscan Sun – maybe it’s because they’re all middle-aged single women who take lovers?), you might also enjoy Getting Lost.

Thanks to Netgalley for an egalley of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Spectacularly spare. This is a translation of Ernaux's uncensored diaries from an eighteen-month-long affair with a married Russian diplomat. He was 35, she 48 or 49. She records the unrestrained passion of their meetings and the absolute pain of waiting for his phone calls when he would come to Paris.

At times this obsession is difficult to consume. Is it brave or desperate or humiliating to admit such vulnerability?It's certainly not how the author seems to present herself professionally or in other aspects of her life. She, a divorcee, mother of grown children, with a shining literary reputation behind closed doors is playing a fool.

I have a bad habit of requesting books that are set to archive a few days later. This is one of those cases. I did not get it downloaded before the archive date.

I've read a few of Annie Ernaux's memoirs and both love and loathe them. I love her prose, her honesty, and her ability to tell about specifics (often her sexual escapades) without sugar coating. She writes about her 18 month love affair with a Russian man in this book, as well as an earlier book. Her writing is superb and her narrator becomes Ms. Ernaux for us, the listeners, the voyeurs.

For those of you who haven't read about Ernaux's obsession with this man, she met a younger, married, Russian diplomat on her last day during a visit to Russia in 1988. Then began the year and a half love affair based on whenever he was in Paris on business and could spend a few hours with her. He didn't take her places or do much than have sex with her. She was 48 years old and an established, award-winning, author. She had 2 adult sons at this time and I would enjoy reading more about her life in general. This memoir was based on her detailed journals and is a fuller piece of work than her earlier memoir Single Passion.

What I have a hard time with is how such an accomplished, intelligent, vibrant, attractive woman could turn into a pile of jelly while waiting and pining for him during all of her waking hours. Don't get me wrong, I get it. I do. Love and lust, especially at 48, which is one of the peak's in women's sexuality, clearly controlled her life by way of her libido. It's because of Ernaux's vulnerability and honesty about herself and how little he actually gave of himself that makes me mentally mad of course. It's the kind of obsession that controls Ernaux's inability to work, write, create, and cope. She is like a love-sick teenager....and she's telling us details in no uncertain terms and without mentally abusing herself for it. So why should I care so deeply for her? Guess it's her magic.

Thanks to the publisher, Dreamscape Media, NetGalley, and Ms. Ernaux for this audio ARC.

Thank you to Netgalley for allowing me to listen to an ARC of Getting Lost.
I live part-time in Paris and along with many of my ex-Pat friends, learned of Annie Ernaux when she won the Nobel prize in Literature. She won for her entire life-time of work not for any one book. This is the second book of hers I have read.
Ernaux writes in first person and much is autobiographical. She is unique in that, for her generation, she wrote about things that were not discussed in polite society. This book is about her affair with a married man. I listened to the audio book. Unfortunately, the narrator read with such breathlessness as if she had just run a 5K. Perhaps Ernaux wants it interpreted as if she was a teenager in thrall to sex but somehow I doubt it. I found it very unpleasant
Ernaux writes about the romance, the sex, the longing, the desire. She gives Lady Chatterly's lover a run for its money. As an older woman reading this, and hormones not functioning as hers are, I found it reminded me of younger times and how glad I am that i'm not hostage to my hormones.
She writes beautifully but this is definitely not to everyone's taste.

I thought this audiobook was just okay. I liked the diary aspect of Ernaux's writing, but the affair just didn't sit right with me.

Curious to read what makes Ernaux a Nobel Prize winner, I requested the audiobook, though I have several of her books, in French, in the TBR. I found this difficult to listen to: Ernaux struggling with the mystery of the other, as incarnated by her Russian lover, a supremely unappealing characters. But the heart has its own raison-d'etre, I guess, I just couldn't get beyond her solipsistic diary entries, or their TMI sexual details. I gave up when she lost her contact lens and then found it on her lover's...

I was glad to see a woman win a Nobel Prize, especially a storied French writing, she just isn't for me.

In 1988 Annie Ernaux was 48 years old, living on the outskirts of Paris, and consumed by a love affair with a 36-year-old Russian diplomat based in Paris. She chronicled the next year and a half in her diary, the belated translation of which has just been published. Annie Ernaux is now eighty-four and the 2022 Noble Prize winner.

Reading this book, one of my first thoughts was – what a lucky man that Russian guy was! He's now immortalized in beautiful literature forever. Annie Ernaux describes him as tall and slender, with dark brown hair and green eyes. He's simply S., who calls her from a public phone and comes whenever he has time after work. He's married to Masha, a woman who, as Ernaux says, is the complete opposite of Annie. S. is not an intellectual; he likes fast cars, simple TV programs, and talks about Brezhnev, but he probably misses Stalin. He also drinks too much and makes love without taking his socks off… the list of his shortcomings is longer, but I'll stop here.

Despite all this, Annie is consumed by desire and spends her days waiting for his calls. She precisely describes her longing, jealousy, and lovemaking. She starts learning Russian and reads Anna Karenina, comparing herself to Anna and her lover to Vronsky. Russian culture embodied in S. fascinates her as exotic and mysterious. Interestingly, the fascination between France and Russia is well documented in history, starting with Peter the Great and Louis XIV. Closer to our times, the followers of Russian-French romances may remember the love story of an iconic Russian poet Vladimir Vysotsky and a French actress, Marina Vlady.

This short book is a brilliant testament to the power of attraction and desire and how much it can take control over one's life. The language of Ernaux's diary is almost raw, and every single emotion stands out as if being exposed. In feverish but also simple prose, Ernaux writes about her past relationships, the death of her mother, and her own abortion. All of it manifests in her dreams, which she describes in detail. This diary was written when she couldn't write anything except short articles for magazines. She also avoided attending social events and basically submerged herself in this love affair, even though she realized that, for many reasons, the relationship had no future. In fear of abandonment, she clung to her fleeting happiness.

Now it's 2023. I don't see thirteen years of age difference as strange, and both women and men talk about their sexuality openly. Reading "Getting lost" is reading a diary of different times. The political situation is also completely different. Still, desire, lust, loneliness, and fear of death are part of our human experience. Annie Ernaux writes about herself, writing about all of us simultaneously. And this is beautiful literature.

A candid glimpse into the year where Ernaux effectively put her life on pause as she waited for her Russian lover.

I guess this would be quite interesting for die-hard fans, but otherwise not so much. I nearly DNF’d a few times, and not sure what compelled me to finish.

Thanks to #NetGalley and the publisher for early access to this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

‘Getting Lost’ is an incredibly frank, and honest look into the affair that Annie Ernaux had with a younger, married man as she was in the years leading up to turning 50. Divorced, and with two grown sons, Annie Ernaux pours her heart out in excruciating detail in her private diary that she has, now, decided to publish. Years ago she published a fictional adaptation of this experience in the novel, ‘Simple Passion’. She felt as though it was time to release this other look at the experience… and I’m grateful to have been let into this vulnerability. I will be picking up ‘Simple Passion’ as well. I read my first Ernaux earlier this month, ‘Happening’ and it incited a love of her style. ‘Getting Lost’ is no exception. While this will not be for everyone, and I’m sure many will be turned off by the contents of the work, I do believe there is much to be gleaned from her honesty.

One of the overwhelming truths I took away from this piece was that we are none immune to the paranoia, impulsivity and self-destruction of toxic passion. Annie Ernaux is a talented, intelligent, interesting woman. She is full of life and experience and craft. She, at this particular time in her life, had been married, raised two children, been divorced. She was a successful writer and done exciting, thoughtful and provocative work. She had also been through much in her her twenties, that defied the status quo. But in this affair she is “reduced” to a pining and often mean, often pathetic shell. She compares waiting for him to reach out to her as one of her greatest griefs. Passion is a theme that arises from her diary entires. I found one particular idea resonant, and it is that what was sullied by shame in her twenties (passion and desire) she is free to indulge to its fullest in her 40s. But is this the reward she (or we) would like to believe? And how clouded is our perception when we romanticize or obsess over another human being? At times I thought; “what are you doing?” And I was confused and frustrated, even disgusted by her action… but I had to look at myself and the things I have done, born from a trauma, a hope (or hopelessness) a need to be loved that masqueraded as selfish passion. Is the artist or art lover in her what brings about this turn, or is it in all of us? I, honestly, respect Annie Ernaux, for allowing such intimacies to be brought forth.

I really wanted to love this but found the narrator too droll. I'm happier to read it and imagine a less monotonous voice! Thank you for the opportunity to give it a listen.

“I realized that I’d lost a contact lens,” Ernaux writes. “I found it on his penis.”

Getting Lost – Audiobook
By Annie Ernaux – 2022 Nobel Prize Award
Audiobook Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
⭐️⭐️⭐️

I realized once I started the audiobook, Getting Lost, that I might not be the biggest fan of this memoir. Why? Because I grew up when women were burning bras in the quest for liberation from female stereotypes. Liberated women wanted to escape societal indoctrination that waiting on a man was the key to happiness. Bleh. However, I give the author, Annie Ernaux, some kudos for having the balls (pun intended) to admit that an almost 50-year-old French woman having an affair with a 30ish-year-old Russian diplomat was a heady experience. This book is her diary from the nearly 2-year relationship, which was purely sexual (he was married and Russian), so there is a sense of her giving up her personal life to wait for the phone to ring. Ugh. I have a hard time separating my personal beliefs from the fact that the author waits, and waits, and waits for his return, although once back in Russia, he disappears. I also think her writing is pretty explicit, and the quote above may be one of the most G-rated in this audiobook. I had to rewind on occasion to make sure I heard her correctly, and I did. Yikes. I think this story would make the author of the Kama Sutra blush. To her credit, Ms. Ernaux won a Nobel Prize for this book, so congrats on the accomplishment. One takeaway is that a woman or man, having a young person sexually interested in the older person can make you lose your damn mind. #sex #olderwoman #youngerman #noRomance #sacrifice #honest #memoir #GettingLost #France #lifestyle #conquest #Steamy
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@NetGalley @7storiespress #audiobook
#book #books #bookaddict #booksofinstagram #bookstagram #bookstagramer #bookshelf #booksbooksbooks #readersofinstagram #reader #booklove #bookreader #reader #reading #covers
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I received a complimentary copy of this audiobook. The opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own. Thank you to Seven Stories Press, NetGalley, and the author for the opportunity to read this audiobook. Pub Date: Jan 30, 2023.

⭐️⭐️⭐️ / 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.

Weather you regard Annie Ernaux as brave lady or a woman with no shame, Everyone would have to agree this book is just a repeat of her salivating over her Russian lover and him not being there her knowing that doomsday is coming and the separation is inevitable and that this book isn’t written like most diaries. Although she is big on sexual detail and her yearning for the Russian businessman There’s nothing about this book that screams diary it is more just a woman’s commentary on how much she wants another woman’s husband and hurt at the exaltation of their sexual encounters and then their lack of them. There isn’t any detail in the diary that put you in that era or any brand that tattoos you to that time and place it is as if everything is generic and I get she couldn’t mention his name but when mentioning a car he wanted or his favorite song that is all you get just thought he wanted a car that he liked a certain song. Maybe this is me just nitpicking but that is what I love about diaries it would be hard-pressed to consider this a diary rather than a woman sexual frustration over her lover and the time she gets to spend with him. If there was just a little more meat on the bone or something that put you in that time and place I think I would’ve been joyed the book much better as a post to the sexual detail we were traded to. I received this book from NetGalley and the publisher but I am leaving this review voluntarily please forgive any mistakes as I am blind and dictate my review.

Tavia Gilbert has a harsh, pinchy voice, a bit unsuitable, IMO, for a text full of vulenarble longing and self-inflicted psychological pain, a text low on positive action. For 7 hours 9 minutes, it jarred my ears, like nails screeching a black board, as did the constant use of words ‘passion’ and ‘desire’. The author Annie Ernaux received Nobel Prize of Literature for her literary career rooted in autobiographical musings. These diaries recount what a 48-year old Ernaux felt about a short-lived sexual affair with a 36 year old Russian diplomat (later embassy official stationed in France) whom she continued to pine for, long after he stopped calling.

I’ve not read ‘Simple Passion’ (1992), the book Ernaux wrote on the affair, but these diary entries, originally published in 2000, are sad and infuriating. By 1990, she had spent 26 years journaling her daily thoughts, which she calls ‘a layer of suffering that I communicate with the rest of humanity’. Being this open about her actions seems more brave than self-indulgent and more revelatory than exploitative. An obviously successful, independent, and available, middle-aged, divorced woman with two adult children being gaslighted by a younger married lover who calls the shots in when and how they will meet and for how long is amusing and painful to listen. As busy and opinionated she is, she is never her true authentic self with him, never expressing an opinion he may disappprove of, beyond the physical reality of enjoying manifestations of sexual pleasure with him as much as she can have or give him. She calls it ‘making love’ and recognizes she’s ‘a mother and a whore’ to him, nothing more. The joy of sex is as clinical and mechanical as the porn she once watched on TV in frustration, with no insight on the preparation of bodies or life beyond. She repeatedly confirms to being in love with the Russian she finds intellectually inferior, sexually inexperienced, childish, drunk, flashy, with a ‘dumpy’ secretarial wife. She has nothing in common with him beyond sexual attraction which engulfs her, even when she’s unsure of what he’s getting out of the union, his motivation and emotion. The rawness of what she writes is uncomfortable and depressingly lonely.

From 4 hour long afternoon euphoric escapades every 12 days or so where they are having sex 3 times each time, to the insipid 1-2 hour sessions petered out between 3 weeks without a word or a single call, you almost feel Ernaux likes feeling this empty and dejected and is enamored with the idea of tormented tears and psychological annihilation.

The euphoria the diary starts soon evolves into a spiral of appprehension and inevitability of doom.

I don’t understand the sentiment, whether the Fench concept of using love and sex interchangeably or how intense and cavalier both are to Ernaux or the self-destructive thoughts that lead to nothing other than a bestseller and a Nobel Prize.

Furthermore, these kinds of books / diary recollections are not for the faint-hearted.

P.S. there is no epilogue or footnote on whether the Russian ever contacted Ernaux again in 2-3 years or 20-30 years time, or any of his children, which probably solves once and for all the great big question that consumed her on what she meant to him.

P.P.S.: The 2020 French film ‘Passion Simple’ is extremely boring, though the actress playing Ernaux, Laetitia Dosch, is formidable. The leads have no chemistry (or biology) together, the story has no depth, and it meanders inexplicably.

Memorable lines:

Chap 5: 59%, 2hr 58min. left: I tell myself I’ve wasted a year of my life and money on a man who asks as he is leaving if he can take the open pack of Malboros. At 20 or at 48 this is what it all comes down to, but what do you do without a man? Without a life?

Chap. 5: 63%: 2hr 39 min. left: thurs 24th Oct. 1989: The present is here, limp and indistinct. The meeting over. He was in Rome and Florence and Avignon on the way back. Conlusion: pure chance or desire on his part to know what I know too, there’s no way of telling. He leaves in October. He wants to see me in 2-3 years. He even says in 20-30 years the first person I’ll call is you.

Chap. 8: 98% 8 min. left: 29th March 1990: The pain of last November was revealing. It foretold everything that followed not only a life reduced to the mere passage of time, but in which S, time of S, would seem almost shameful, a waste of energy. The words I said to him seem strange now: ‘Anywhere, anytime, ask me anything and I’ll do it for you’. I’m no longer sure it’s true. and yet he may still believe it. It’s the first time in my life that I’ve seen trees bloom in March. They’ve been this way for over a week, even the lilac.