Getting Lost by Annie Ernaux (tr. Alison L. Strayer)

The Nobel Prize-winning French author Annie Ernaux has risen in prominence in recent years, partly due to Fitzcarraldo Editions’ support for her books. She writes, with remarkable candour, clarity and vulnerability, about various aspects of the female experience, including adolescence, sex, abortion and family. Throughout her work, she has shown an interest in broader society, from social development and progression to the relationship between the personal and the universal. 

A couple of years ago, I wrote about Simple Passion (1991), a series of autofictional reflections Ernaux put together about her affair with a young married man in the late 1980s. It’s a very compelling book which explores the emotional impact of this all-consuming relationship on her day-to-day life.

Getting Lost can be seen as a companion piece to that book as it presents Ernaux’s unexpurgated diaries from that time, opening with the beginning of the affair in September 1988 and closing five months after it finished in November 1989. (The last entry is dated early April 1990.) It’s a raw, intimate, unflinching read, charting Ernaux’s thoughts on the highs and lows of this relationship as it oscillates between brief bursts of intense passion and long agonising periods of uncertainty between her lover’s visits. Any woman who has had an affair with a married man will find much that resonates here, from the interminable waiting for phone calls to the constant doubts and uncertainties to the all-consuming moments of desire that compensate for the downsides, albeit very briefly, obliterating all rational thoughts in the heat of the moment.

Rewinding to September 1998, we learn how Ernaux hooked up with the man she refers to as ‘S’, an attractive, married Russian diplomat stationed in Paris with the Soviet Embassy. S, who at thirty-five is thirteen years younger than Ernaux, has responsibilities for culture, which bring him into contact with Ernaux and other French writers. In fact, it is during a writers’ junket to Russia that the pair get together. While Ernaux initially thinks of it as a one-night-stand on the last evening of the trip, she is swept away by the intensity of her feelings for S, prompting a continuation of the liaison following the pair’s return to France. 

Their meetings are arranged similarly each time, with little warning or certainty. S typically calls Ernaux on the phone whenever an opportunity arises for him to get away. Soon after the call, he comes to her house in Cergy, roughly 20km from Paris, stays a few hours when they make love, and then leaves to go home to his wife. Ernaux never knows when he will call again – or if he will call again. Nothing is certain or pre-planned; rather, everything is tenuous and unpredictable.

The wait begins as soon as I wake up. There is never any ‘after.’ Life stops from the moment he rings the doorbell and enters. I’m tormented by the fear that he won’t be able to come. The beauty of this whole affair lies in its continual uncertainty. But I don’t know the nature of his attachment. To say that it is ‘sensual’ doesn’t mean anything. Anyway, that would be the most beautiful, truest, and clearest kind of attachment. (p. 39)

While S is not much of an intellectual, he loves luxury, fancy cars, stylish clothes and social connections. There are touches of misogyny entwined with this narcissistic steak, which Ernaux comments on in her diaries, but they’re not troubling enough to prevent her from being swept up in this passion. S remains a somewhat mysterious and elusive presence in Ernaux’s world for the duration of the affair; she knows so little about his life apart from their time together.

In several of her diary entries, Ernaux documents the difficulties she faces when trying to concentrate on her work between S’s visits. She is beholden to the phone, waiting for his calls, afraid to leave home in case he rings up while she is out. Consequently, any new creative writing projects are pushed to one side as she honours pre-existing commitments only.

The cycle begins again: a doleful, lethargic day when I’m unable to do anything creative. Then the waiting returns, the desire, and the suffering, because in the type of relationship we have, I’m at the mercy of his phone calls. (p. 41)

Something Ernaux does particularly well here is to convey the emotional impact of fitting her life almost entirely around S’s availability. In essence, her life during this time consists of a sequence of ‘bland and burdensome actions, punctuated only occasionally by moments of intensity’ with S, making it impossible for her to function normally. As she documents in her diaries, the gulf between the heady desire of passion and the numbing reality of its absence is enormous and unbearable.

I really ask myself, must I continue to live this way, between expectation and chagrin, apathy and desire? Complete similarity between my behaviour at the time of my mother’s death and now. […] It is a lovely hell, but hell nonetheless. (p. 42)

My life is hollowed out by desire and pain. Is that what passion is? I’m not even sure. (p. 78)

Ernaux writes about how her desire for this man feels close to a desire for death, ‘an annihilation of [the] self’ as she puts it here. In her mind, desire and death are intertwined, inextricably linked in intensity and feeling. Moreover, as this all-consuming affair deepens, she describes getting lost in this desire as her sense of self dissolves.

Love and writing are the only things that hold any meaning for Ernaux outside these bursts of passion with S, and she is frequently assailed by fears: the fear of missing him or not being able to connect, fear that he won’t call, either because he no longer needs her or has become bored of her, having transferred his affections to someone else. On other occasions, she worries about not being beautiful enough for S, not giving him enough pleasure or becoming too clingy for his tastes, any of which could signal the end of their relationship at the drop of a hat.  

There is a time in a love affair when you run – everything still lies ahead, full of hope – and another time when everything tumbles into the past and what lies ahead will never be anything but repetition and decline. I situate the moment it changed as sometime in November, but cannot be more precise. More likely December…October and November were two very beautiful months – sunny, moreover – and December very dark (p. 59)

In effect, she is trapped in a vicious cycle – the inability to concentrate, the agonising wait for a call, the fear that he’s had enough, the elation when he gets in touch, the passion of their lovemaking, the emptiness when he departs. Rinse and repeat.

Gradually, the gaps between S’s phone calls begin to lengthen, deepening Ernaux’s fears that a break-up is looming. On multiple occasions, she vows to break up with him if he doesn’t call or come to see her by a specific date. But then, just as these self-imposed deadlines are about to pass, he suddenly makes contact again, triggering a rush of elation that sweeps away her doubts.

From an early stage in the relationship, Ernaux knows that the affair will come to an end when S must return to Russia in the autumn of 1989. On the day of his departure, she feels a transition taking place, moving from a world of ‘possible presence’ to one of ‘definite absence’. In some respects, this loss feels like a death, leaving a void that cannot be filled.

Will it be harder to erase this past year than the eighteen years with my husband? Hatred made things easier then. Now love complicates them. (p. 194)

In the days that follow, Ernaux feels sad, listless and depressed. All she wants to do is sleep, and the bleak December weather does little to help.

Nevertheless, the book ends on a more optimistic note when, five months after her last encounter with S, Ernaux wakes up one day with a sense of happiness. There is nothing concrete underpinning this brighter mood, but it’s a start. Moreover, it leads to a new determination on Ernaux’s part to write something risky or uncomfortable ‘like a cellar door that opens and must be entered, come what may.’ As ever, Ernaux hopes to create something meaningful and universal from her experiences, capturing thoughts and emotions that may prove useful to others. Together with her autofictional account, Simple Passion, the diaries in Getting Lost very much fulfil this role, illuminating a woman’s desire with candour and clarity.

Getting Lost is published by Fitzcarraldo Editions; my thanks to the Independent Alliance and the publishers for kindly providing a copy.