GETTING LOST

Tavia Gilbert expertly narrates this revealing memoir by Annie Ernaux, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2022. Gilbert masterfully inhabits Ernaux's inner life by revealing the angst and sensuality of the affair she had four decades ago, as revealed in her journal entries. Gilbert's conversational tone is ideal for the interior monologues in this work. Ernaux is a meticulous notetaker. Her Russian apparatchik lover keeps his socks on while they make love, wears French designer clothes, and wants her, in part, because of her literary fame. This self-portrait of Ernaux, who was 12 years older than her Soviet amour, is told chronologically and unsparingly. Ironically, the ending section, where the sex is just a memory, reveals rich elements of her life as a public intellectual. A.D.M. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine [Published: FEBRUARY 2023]