3 Stars
GR Bookshelves: 2023, audio, bios-memoirs, europe, feminism, france, netgalley, novellas-anthologies, women-centered


This is a novella by the infamous Annie Ernaux, a Nobel prize winning author. I have read 3 of her memoirs and this one, The Young Man, makes #4.

The Young Man is about a relationship that Ernaux had when she was in her early 50's, with a young man, and a student, who was about 30 years her junior. That would make him in his 20's. Her states that her writing keeps her memories alive and she is unashamed to be open about her sexual relationships - some might say "affairs". As with most of the relationships that she has shared with readers, this one ends not so well. But here's the thing, at least Ernaux was having sex in her 50's, which is a peak time for women of that age.

Annie Ernaux is unlike most female authors of her era because she is so reflective, open, honest, and just gutsy. She's also unembarrassed and unencumbered as she spills parts of her life of what most of us would think of as private or secretive. Not for Ernaux who has been quoted as needing to write to live. When I read her unflinching prose, I always wonder if she's directing or challenging us to read about her life, her thoughts, and her struggles.

Yes, it seems like every relationship is over-shared and she is overindulgent about her life and sex, but doesn't someone learn from her sharing? Who else is this open in this area?

Bravo to the narrator Tavia Gilbert and translator Alison Strayer who brought this to life.

Thank you to the publisher, NetGalley, and Ernaux for my ARC. My opinions are honest and my own. I read this in 2023, the summer, and omitted transferring the review here. My apologies.

Discussion on my YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/vKgdQ2AINqI?si=sJrACSMAk1F1E_51&t=623

Audio Script:

Another new release is an English translation of Annie Ernaux’s The Young Man—a super-short memoir of her love affair with a much younger man—a man quite a bit less than half her age. I listened to this as an audiobook. I was extremely fond of Ernaux's books about her mother and her father, but The Young Man seemed too slight to make much of an impression on me. Ernaux often seems to be reveling in her own enjoyment of the scandalous, but without offering any kind of insight into why she sought it in her life. In fact, there were moments when I wondered if she was involved in the relationship just to have an exciting plot for a new memoir. What could she get away with, she seems to be asking of her readers.

If this work had been by an author I did not already admire, or if this author had been a mature man having an affair with a very young woman, I don’t think I would have read (or listened) past the first few pages. Massive imbalances in power and authority are not subjects I seek out in new books. But, somehow I assumed Ernaux would turn things into something deep and insightful. In my opinion, she does not. There IS a slightly interesting little twist at the end, but it didn’t justify the time I spent with this book—even though it was only about half an hour.

Thank you Dreamscape Media and Netgalley for granting me access to the Advanced Listening Copies in exchange for my honest review!

I absolutely LOVED The Young Man! At only 35 pages (about 35 min on audio) it's a TINY book that packs a punch! No wonder it made it to Time's 100 Must-Read Books of 2023!

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 are better experienced in print.

In The Young Man Ernaux recounts her affair with the former student, A, some 30 years her younger. While in Getting Lost the affair with S is "secret", largely due to S's being married, in The Young Man Ernaux fully embraces the relationship in the open. In all matters superior to her young lover, Ernaux clearly considers the relationship with A to be of "mutual gain": "He gave me pleasure and made me relive things I would never have imagined experiencing again. That I treated him to trips and saved him from looking for a job that would have made him less available to me seemed a fair arrangement, a good deal, especially since it was I who set the rules. I was in a dominant position, and I used the weapons of that dominance, whose fragility, in a romantic relationship, I nonetheless recognized. [...] I liked to think of myself as the one who could change his life."

I found it especially interesting to read about Ernaux observations with regards to the reaction of the "public" when facing the couple with such a large age gap. There is no sense of "being ashamed" or "self-conscious" in her recollections which I found very empowering. There is just a very clear understanding of "why": "[...] I knew that if I was with a twenty-five-year-old man, it was so that I would not continually be looking at the time-worn face of a man my age, the face of my own aging. When A's face was before me, mine was young, too. Men have known this forever, and I saw no reason to deprive myself".

As in Getting Lost, besides focusing on the romance with A, Ernaux reminisces about past traumas, and relationships and how they shaped her as a person and as a writer. There is a fair amount about what role the process of aging takes in woman's life.

And what you take away from this book is perhaps not surprising but still a delightful reminder: live your life to the fullest, take it by the balls so to speak, traumas and all.

I found the ending to be one of the most charming in recent memory: "It was autumn, the last of the twentieth century. I found that I was happy to be entering the third millennium alone and free."

And...I'll leave you with that 😂 (READ ERNAUX! You're welcome.)

I found this book to be very boring. Its written by an older woman who finds herself in a romantic situation with a younger man and all the while she keeps comparing him to the man and life she had when she was his age. I'm not sure if she longed to return to that time or if she just wanted him to do things differently. It's not a long read/listen so at least there is that.

"The Young Man" by Annie Ernaux is a Unique Non-Fiction Listening Experience!

I feel like I've just walked through Annie Ernaux's head...

Random thoughts. Pieces and parts. It feels like miscellaneous notes jotted down on napkins and slips of paper, shoved into pockets and purses, retrieved much later and stored in a private place, then brought together for a short reflection on memories of the past.

The author describes her affair with a university student thirty years her junior where a relationship soon develops without any expectations of a future together. She feels the present is enough.

As Annie lives in the moment with him, her memories swirl, and her story wanders between being a child and her current age of fifty-four years. She credits her relationship with this much younger man as the catalyst for her ability to travel through her life, in her head. While with him and watching him, she sees parts of her younger self in him.

Thirty years earlier, perhaps a comparison to their disparity in age, she never would have chosen to be with him. When they are together in public, being covertly watched, she is the one who stirs the most curiosity. An older woman with a younger man? It's not the norm, yet only one of them is judged....

"The Young Man" audiobook is a 34M listen narrated by Tavia Gilbert, who captures the essence of Annie Ernaux's words and delivers them perfectly.

"The Young Man" is a book that generates thoughtful reflection about what's been read. Despite its short length, I don't need to know anything more about this relationship. What's provided is a frank, deeply personal, and boldly revealing snapshot. I enjoyed my first adventure with this Nobel Prize winning author. I now understand the allure of her simple prose and unique topics, and I will be returning for a second look at her work soon.

3.75⭐rounded up!

Thank you to NetGalley, Dreamscape Media, and Annie Ernaux for an ALC of this book. It has been an honor to give my honest and voluntary review.

"The Young Man" by Annie Ernaux is an essay about her romantic relationship with a much younger man. I thought the way she turned the narrative around on herself, discussing what her attraction to this man actually says about her and the way she is perceived societally when the couple is in public was interesting and a really honest and deep examination about her own motivations and possibly flaws.

More than the essay, I really enjoyed the biography of the author that follows. I am new to Ernaux's work, having first read her earlier this year, so it was nice to hear a boilerplate timeline of her life and accomplishments to bring context to her nonfiction work.

The narration was really well done, I just wish the book was longer!

A friend turned me on to Annie Ernaux, and I have been loving her books ever since. While all of her books are short, this one is so short that just when you are getting into it, it's over.

In A Young Man, Ernaux recounts her affair with a man 30 years her junior. She tells of his love for her, which she found almost impossible to accept, because she could not internalize the fact that a man who could have been her son could love such an older woman. As an again woman, myself, this makes a lot of sense to me.

Ernaux also brings up other situations in her life, and juxtaposes them with her current one. The book is moving and relatable, but far too short!

I enjoyed Ernaux's writing (although I listened to it over audio)-- crisp, and introspective. A reflective short story of her affair with a young man, A. Ernaux describes the complexity and simplicity of aging through the life of memories and her passionate affair. I would recommend this book to fans of Annie Ernaux.

I gave this story three stars because of the length. I thought it was very short to be its own standalone book. I also found the content, the story of an affair, to be unmoving. I would have liked more meat to the story.


Thank you NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for providing this story to the readers!

The Young Man was my first Ernaux and was a super quick listen. I liked the exploration of a relationship between an older woman and younger man, as well as gender politics and how people view that kind of dating.

I was looking forward to reading my first Annie Ernaux since I’ve been hearing such good things about her writing. Perhaps this wasn’t the best choice to start with. I enjoyed this book fine but there wasn’t much depth to me. The audiobook narrator Tavia Gilbert was very good. This short memoir tells the story of her affair with a man thirty years younger than her. I’d definitely be interested to read another one of her books.

Everything about this short piece of memoir reminds me of the random people I met in France when I was 20 and 22. The imagery is almost stereotypical, describing the younger man’s poverty by the type of cheese he purchases (laughing cow and camembert, for shame) as well as how far he had to buy a baguette… Ernaux is honest about her feelings and her insecurities when in her 50s and menopausal she falls for a man in his early 20s and a past student of hers. The somewhat brief affair is marked by Ernaux’s power over A and her choices to consider then dismiss the pressures placed on them by the patriarchy.

Like most French writing I’ve read in translation, there are moments of unparalleled poetic beauty, some very strange markers of personhood and relationships, and at least one cringe worthy moment that had me throw up in my mouth a little - He wanted a child so he could be inside her and then come out of her…. Um ewww. No matter what writing like this is always entertaining and surprising.

I will never get enough of Annie Ernaux’s work. In this extremely short, 35 minute, audiobook, The Young Man, Ernaux tells the story of her whirlwind affair with a student, 30 years her junior, when she’s in her 50s. In him, she feels herself to be both ageless, and also aged. She’s drawn to him, sexually, of course, but he also reminds her of her own working class beginnings and her time as a student. The affair is a strange kind of time travel, and it puts her in a dream like state of repetition and memory.

Annie Ernaux always manages to speak frankly and objectively about her own actions, motivations, flaws, vulnerabilities, cruelties, etc. She subtly explores the power dynamics at play, and also the ways in which she is viewed by society in regards to the “coupling”. The way that she, as an older woman with a younger man, is looked down on for a perception of “incest”, and the subsequent hypocrisy of the reality if their roles were reversed.

Thank you so much to NetGalley for the opportunity to listen to yet another of Annie Ernaux’s works. I’m always blown away by her storytelling and have really enjoyed the narration by Tavia Gilbert as well as the translation by Alison L Strayer. I feel that Ernaux’s work has so much to teach me, as a woman, as a human, and as the teller of my own story. I loved it.