SOURCE: Abramson, Julie. Review of Se perdre, by Annie Ernaux. World Literature Today 76, no. 1 (winter 2002): 171-72.

In the following review, Abramson explores the role of truth in Se perdre and comments that the work investigates “the relationship between experience and its representation in writing.”

In the introductory pages to Se perdre, Annie Ernaux informs us that the subject of her latest work is the same as that of Passion simple, published a decade ago in 1992 (see WLT 67:1, p. 152). Both works give accounts of Ernaux's love affair in 1988-89 with a married Soviet diplomat, referred to as S. Shortly following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the weakening of Soviet borders, S returned home from his post in Paris, putting an end to the liaison.

For Ernaux, S's attractiveness resides as much in his Soviet nationality, perceived as exotic, as in his unsuitability for her. He is nearly...