SOURCE: Dallas, Lucy. “Writing the True History of Love.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 5117 (27 April 2001): 25.

In the following review, Dallas compares Se perdre with Ernaux's earlier work Passion simple, asserting that Passion simple presents a more engaging blend of “fact and fiction.”

Annie Ernaux is a respected writer and teacher who has always drawn on her own life and experience to furnish her books. These used to be called novels, but within the past ten to fifteen years, she has been producing directly autobiographical work. She has said of her books “Ce ne sont ni des romans ni de l'autofiction. Ce sont des récits véridiques.” This truthfulness has led her to publish not only a bleak account of her mother's decline and death (Une femme, 1998), but also her own diary on which the book was based (“Je ne suis pas sortie de ma nuit,” 1997). Here the same...