In Annie Ernaux’s autobiographical story, translated by Alison L Strayer, the author recalls a past affair with a student who was 30 years her junior. “Often I have made love to force myself to write … I hoped that orgasm, the most violent end to waiting that can be, would make me feel certain that there is no greater pleasure than writing a book.” In other words, she is keen to break her writer’s block. But, to both their surprise, the affair becomes “a relationship that we longed to take to the limit, without really knowing what that meant”.
The Young Man is Ernaux’s shortest memoir yet, clocking just over half an hour in audio. But brevity doesn’t impede her ability to get to the heart of the intimate dynamics or external pressures of a situation that many others view as taboo. The couple get disapproving looks in restaurants, which, rather than leaving Ernaux cowed, reinforces her “determination not to hide my affair with a man who could have been my son”.
