Emotional rollercoaster, beautiful writing from the Nobel Prize recipient. Just wonderful and although explicit there was something tender and passionate

Beautifully written, it presents feelings so truthfully it gave me goosebumps! I will definitely return to it.

Annie Ernaux, winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize for literature, has a vast literary canon and "Getting Lost" is her latest book. Set in Paris, its an unaltered journal of an 18 month long affair with a Russian diplomat. I admire Ernaux's courage and honesty in revealing so much of herself, her desire, her lack of shame, her complete debasement. There was just too much teenage angst for me, fears of being dumped, waiting for phone calls that never came. It was tedious and I wanted it all to end!

I will buy this book to finish later, as I did not manage to finish this in time - my own fault, as I downloaded it too close to the archive date and didn't manage to finish it. But I'm reading deep into Annie Ernaux and reading everything she's put out!

The re-written diary of a year of passion with a Soviet diplomat in Paris in the last years of the Soviet Union, Getting Lost by Annie Ernaux, translated from French by Alyson L. Strayer, and published by Fitzcarraldo Editions sounded for me a bit different compared to other works by Ernaux I´ve read until now.

It lacks the global perception of political events that I appreciated so dearly in The Years and has a more fragmentary character, mostly diary entries, unfiltered passions put on paper, shortly oder later after the encounters with S. It also has the mark of time, a stamp of desperation for getting older and out of the reach of passion. Thus, the passions are dissected in a more existential way, as signs of her own´s entrance into the old age, out of passion, out of desire.

´To lose a man´s to age several years in a fell swoop, grow older by all the time that did not pass when he was there, and the imagined years to come´. There is a desperate emptiness of time being out of love, a sadness of the flesh and lack of focus of the mind. There is a certain confusion of feelings, caught between passion and the post-making love mixed feelings. ´After all, he came here to my home, he sometimes said ´I love you´, he desired me, a lot...´

The part that for me was by far the most interesting in this book concerns the extensive mention of her dreams.

Ernaux, almost fifty, divorced with two grown up sons, met S. on a trip to Soviet Union in 1988, organised for French writers. Their relationship, probably not exclusive, continued for one year almost, with she waiting for him to be called from a public phone to be announced his couple of hours short visits. Sometimes, they met at events at the Soviet embassy. She found out that he left the country after calling herself the embassy. However, she sent him a post card to the embassy from Abu Dhabi. He was married and she met his wife once or two.

I had recently the chance to hear some recordings collected on Antologie Sonore du Socialisme, a selection of French-speaking oral archives about the socialism - and communism as well. At the society level in France, there is an obvious sympathy or even belief in the ideas that were freely distributed later - in a more or less distorted way - by the Soviet Union. The representative of French intelligentsia, among which Ernaux, were definitely on this side of history, although the diary, and no other book I´ve read by her for now, do not obviously pledge a political cause. She has some doubts once in a while that her lover may have some KGB-esque involvement. Indeed, love may make you blind and why should I expect a real engagement of ideas when passion is always stronger.

It is only passion featured in this book and it may be so the way things are sometimes. My mind is too political sometimes and I expect some hard political conversation after the act of love is consumed. There is none and although I may continue to be a big fan of Ernaux, I may have some ideological doubts on the left way of thinking and passionately living.

Rating: 3.5 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review

I was unable to finish reading this before the book was archived, sadly, but what I did get to see was a privilege. I’m just sorry I wasn’t able to finish it in time!

Apart from the sexual detail, like an adolescent’s crush account– solipsistic, obsessive, self indulgent

Almost entirely, reading this, the thought going through my head was : If this had been a diary by a completely unknown person, would anyone have given it time and space even to read, let alone publish?

I’m pretty sure the answer would be know. I’m really not doing down Ernaux’s writing, merely the tone and obsessive monomania, the subject matter. I was writing these sorts of journals (as also were friends) in our teens. That point in life where one first falls in love, in lust, in crush, with some other. That obsession where the world could be coming to an end, and you’d hardly notice, caught in a blind alley of tunnel vision ‘will he call’ ‘we kissed@ ‘he fancies/ doesn’t fancy me’ And, if it’s the latter ‘the world has ended, there is nothing – and the intense, almost pleasure of end of the world despair. The self-indulgence of it all, the masochistic surrender. the magical thinking. ‘If I can….if this happens…it’s a sign he will call.

Most of us probably stopped writing those journals in our twenties, perhaps in our thirties, began to find the resources to build an identity and worth outside whether THE MAN could ‘make us whole, or complete us.

Ernaux was 48 when she began this masochistic affair with a married Russian cultural attache. They have intense repeated sex in every way possible. He is totally in control, she cannot contact him, she has to wait for him to decide to contact her. She spends well over a year with a life on hold between the – some 40 or so encounters where he visits her for a few hours of lovemaking. He promises to call. He doesn’t.

Over and over and over. And what is even more depressing, upsetting, frustrating is she seems to have this pattern in relationships. There are constant hark-backs to the same trajectory with other men in 63, the 70s, earlier in the 80s, with 4 or 5 other men.

Effectively, this reads as an account of addiction, self harm, self-abasement with no real end. Reading it, I must say I felt soiled – it was rather like rubber-necking at carcrashes, reality TV of the kind where viewers will only be feeling their superiority at not being so hapless, hopeless, helpless.

What seemed especially awful is that Ernaux would want this to be published. Sure, facing one’s own shadows is crucial – as part of growing through, changing – but this seems to be the delight of those who pick their scabs for public confessional – without much edification – whether for self, or others.

I have read – and enjoy reading – autobiographies, including those where dark nights of the soul are engaged with. But this is all one note of self-obsession. Ernaux’s grown children, the death of her father-in -law, the wider world, friendships, - nothing matters except that ‘S’ made a visit, they had sex, or didn’t make a visit, didn’t call. There’s no light or shade in this, no nuance, just an endless wail.

I requested this BECAUSE she is a Nobel prize winning writer. Which made me expect – not this, but something of more insight and variety. Ok, I suppose honesty and willingness not to sanitise should be applauded. But, if it just feels as if you were someone shoot up, publicly foul and humiliate themselves, over and again, then ‘honesty’ doesn’t really seem quite what is being applauded

My question is – why was this even published? Presumably cashing in on Ernaux winning the Nobel, on the assumption that anything she writes must be worthwhile. However, this book simply isn’t worthwhile. It’s the original, unedited and unaltered diary she kept when in the throes of an affair with a Soviet attaché in 1988. The whole thing consists – as do many adolescent diaries – of entries in which she wonders if he is going to call, if he is going to turn up, if he still loves her, if he has another lover, and then chronicles, in excruciating detail, the sex they have when he does turn up. Over and over again ad infinitum. Only she wasn’t an adolescent but a woman approaching 50. It’s boring and tedious and repetitive. And at times even distasteful. At one point when she muses about not seeing him again she talks about the possibility of having contracted AIDS from him – “at least he’ll have given me that.” Really? How crass is that? That’s going to strike an unpleasant chord with all those whose lives have actually been devastated by AIDS. The affair was all-consuming for Ernaux, and that’s fine, that’s her business, but why think the rest of us might be interested? It illuminates nothing. It doesn’t enlighten us about love or relationships or the human condition. Not to mention the dreams and we all know how tedious other people’s dreams are. I found it an arduous and relentless read and after a while just skimmed it to get to the end. In case it got better. It didn’t.

I enjoyed reading this book, having never read anything by Annie Ernaux before. She's an excellent writer and has a great way of describing her thoughts and emotions in a way that reels in the reader.

There were points where I felt a little bored - the book is basically the story of her obsession with a man she has an affair with and so does get a bit repetitive. She spends much of her time wondering how he feels about her, when he is going to ring, etc etc. I was aware that an entire book written by a woman that is so unashamedly about being obsessed with a man feels a little uncomfortable - shouldn't she have more to do in her life?

However, having said that, the book does really create a sense of headiness, and the reader does get pulled into her mindset. It gets across very well how an affair can dominate someone's life to the exclusion of all else.

I did not really see the added value of publishing these diary fragments in addition to 'Simple Passion'. I was very impressed by Simple Passion: the openness of it, the way it described complete infatuation, the way it also described the infatuation ebbing away after a while and how we change as persons.

Getting Lost is very close to Simple Passion and therefore did not have any of the surprise or wow-effect. It is still well-written and there are some clear-eyed observations.

Tiresome and monotonous are just two of an array of negative adjectives I could use to describe my feelings about this book. I tried a number of times to continue reading the book but found the content so insistently melodramatic to the point of being absolutely weary of the work.

I have read another of Ernaux's books which I enjoyed but this book was not to my taste.

The diary of a writer of her affair with a younger Russian married man in the 80s.

I think I should have read some of Annie Ernauxs work before diving in because I wasn’t familiar with any of the periods of her life she referred to just by year.

Unfortunately, I didn’t enjoy this book. I found it repetitive. Essentially it was the same events over and over, they meet, she waits in anguish for his call, he comes over, they have a lot of sex, leaves and repeat…

I wouldn’t have disagreed if you’d told me it was the diary of a seventeen year old. With the over-dramatic teenage angst over a relationship and confusion between lust and love.

I couldn’t empathise with the writer; her son was only referred to as being in the way which I couldn’t help judging and has anyone ever cried tears of desire in a lover’s absence? Or is it that desire is the wrong word? It makes me wonder what the original was in French.

However, I thought the translation was excellent. You couldn’t tell you were reading a novel originally in French.

Thank you to netgalley and the publishers for the chance to read and review this book.

Oh I so wanted to love this book. I've loved Annie Ernaux for years and read most of her work, but I found this diary to be so gloomy and repetitive and probably wouldn't recommend it. Sorry, I wanted to love it!

I hate giving ratings this low, as there are obviously people out there who will love this book - and who am I to judge an established writer such as Annie Ernaux?! - but I did really struggle with it. At first I was completely onboard because it reads like the angsty scribblings of a fifteen year old in the grips of first love (cough lust/infatuation), and that is nothing if not ME - even at the ripe old age of 30; hence the two stars as opposed to one. She says things like “it really makes no difference if he calls or not, the excruciating tension is the same” and “how do I go about this so that my attachment doesn’t show too quickly and so that the difficulty of keeping me becomes apparent to him, at least once in a while?” and (my favourite) “I’ll see him once again, and then break up” - which we’ve all said, haven’t we, knowing full well we won’t, even though he was/has always been a massive waste of time. I felt not so alone or loser-y, but after realising that the entire book is the same three or four sentiments repeated over and over and over and over (you get the point) again, even I was inwardly begging her to dump him and move on. Quite literally nothing apart from that happens, except for some weird dreams that she records and that I could probably interpret if I was a) more intellectual and b) had cared to by that point, which I really really didn’t. Maybe I need to give one of her more novel-y titles a go? I don’t think I’ll be attempting it any time soon though…

Annie Ernaux notes in a diary the feelings and reflections caused by the love affair she has with a married diplomat from the USSR during the period from September 1988 to April 1990 with the intention of using all this material for the writing of a novel.

I do love Annie Ernaux but after reading this ARC it's changed the whole way I think about her . It's about an affair she had at age 48 and she comes across like a desperate teenager rather than a woman. Sad because I really loved Simple Passion and most of her work which deals with her earlier life

This sparse text is unflinching and revealing, Ernaux uncovers the intensity promised by a love affair with a directness that stays with the reader long after they have walked away from the page.

Courage is imbued in every sentence: the courage to open oneself up to another, and that required for true self reflection. The author never shrinks from examination of herself and her feelings - the highs rise and fall again with pace - creating a capsule of an intimacy both specific and entirely universal.

Annie Ernaux’s journal of her 18-month affair with a younger, married Russian diplomat.

Powerful writing, loaded with raw emotion. The memoir evokes the dizzying highs and lows of passion, an all-encompassing madness bringing the author’s writing career to a halt, and in which other women and even the lover’s compatriots are objects of extreme jealousy. A passion interspersed increasingly with the agonies of waiting for the lover to come to her.

Despite the ‘madness’ the author remains painfully self-aware, able to analyse her willingness to do anything, anytime for her lover, and to continue in a relationship when its end is too apparent.

A very interesting and insightful book by Annie Ernaux on her having a relationship with a married man.
It was a book really took me by surprise and with Ernaux being very open about the situation and sort of letting us into her very private parts of her life by sharing her diary entries of this time when she was in this relationship.

Was such an interesting read and for sure recommend

Getting Lost is an archive of the journals Annie Ernaux kept between 1988 and 1990, documenting her relationship with a pragmatic, married, younger Russian man during his stay in Paris. These journals were fictionalized by Ernaux in 1991 and subsequently published as the novella, Simple Passion (translated by Tanya Leslie). This time, Ernaux offers transparency with these unedited journals, stripped bare, as a cry of passion and pain. Ernaux, 48 at the time of writing, more confident than ever after receiving the Renaudot Prize in 1984, finds herself "powerless in the face of desire," completely dissolved inside a man who could never satisfy her.

What starts with impulsive nights of passion in a Leningrad hotel room quickly becomes blank, incomprehensible misery. Borrowed moments during sun filled afternoons and reckless rendezvous meetings under moonlight are soon not enough to satisfy Ernaux's "boundless inextinguishable desire," as her lucid descriptions of passion and sex are replaced by obsessive, consuming thoughts of doubt and fear.

She writes in absolutes, oscillating between wild delight and stagnant despair on every page. Her dramatic musings, "He called! He loves me!" "He hasn't called! My life is empty!" become repetitive, monotonous, and even infuriating at times, but it only underlines the mind numbing wait that accompanies the dissatisfaction of constantly yearning for something more.

During these pages, Ernaux exists in a chasm of waiting, the same kind Taylor Swift wrote about in the song August, "Wanting was enough.. to live for hope of it all, cancel plans just in case you call." There's an underlying, unwavering hope, an almost delusional belief, that the affair will become more than just that, and that the painful uncertainty, the dread of being cast aside, or forgotten about entirely, will become worth it – but it ultimately leads to more pain once reality hits, "you weren't mine to lose."

Initially unbothered by her role as the other woman – she considers herself "the preferred one, for as long as it lasts," – but once their illicit love-making reaches a plateau, Ernaux is tormented by the possibility of S's indifference towards her. She overthinks every phone call and the absence of one, becoming hyper aware of her role as the "other woman," hopelessly wanting to be the "only woman", or "the last woman." Provoked by jealousy, she competes with his wife, "I have to be the one who sparkles most, desperately," and tries to win his affection with extravagant gifts. 

Ernaux describes this ruinous state of mind as "the hollow place where death, writing and sex merge" but claims the link is too difficult to express. This book makes that link tangible on the page. Dreading her final meeting with S, and their inevitable separation once he leaves France, Ernaux draws parallels to the death of her mother, the dissolution of her marriage and the loss of her youth, and it becomes clear she uses sex to feel in control.

Tangled between these journal entries documenting her doomed love affair is a dissection of her relationship with writing, which she admits is "another source of pain." Insecurities induced by her relationship with S are mirrored in her thoughts about her writing: when she believes he has lost interest in her, she loses interest in her writing and in a sense loses interest in herself.

Ernaux writes in glorious detail about the mundane, with every word relating back to S. Stepping on the exposed roots of a tree takes her back to moments spent with him in Leningrad. The sound of tyres on pebbles conjures memories of his midnight arrivals. His absence "binds [her] to him deeply and against all reason," but it's clear again, it's not love she's desperate for – "I only want love that is chosen, desired by me" – it's control.

'Getting Lost' by Annie Ernaux was first published in French in 2001.
It's a diary the author kept in 1989, while having an affair with a younger, married man.
She was already an author then, and he was a Russian attaché at the Soviet embassy in Paris.

In this diary, Ernaux documents the events that happened to her in the span of a year and a half in great detail. Her passionate account of what happened during that time, her thoughts and emotions, were all written in a very raw and vulnerable way.
Reading her brutally honest and unedited diary entries can be gripping but also quite uncomfortable at times.

There were some truly beautiful passages in 'Getting Lost', and at times the book almost reads as fiction.
My only critique would be that certain parts of the book and her feelings became very repetitive, but that's something you'd expect from reading someone's diary anyway.

The book was masterfully translated into English by Alison L. Strayer.
It's a book fans of Ernaux will enjoy, but it's not one I'd recommend to people unfamiliar with her work.

Huge thanks to Fitzcarraldo Editions and Netgalley for the free digital ARC of 'Getting Lost' in exchange for my honest review.