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 tactic is employed; in 1991, she published a short book called Passion simple, a first-person history of an affair between the narrator, a woman writer called Annie, and a married Russian diplomat living in France. Now she has released another book on the same subject, but without any pretence at authorial distance; Se perdre is Ernaux's diary covering the eighteen months or so of the affair.

In an introduction, she tells us that the journal remains wholly unedited, except that initials are used to protect others. Her lover is referred to throughout simply as “S”, though with all the details disclosed about him here he must be easily identifiable; Ernaux admits to publishing the journals without consulting him or even caring what he thinks, and she acknowledges that he may see the act as “… un abus de pouvoir littéraire, voire [une] trahison”. However, this is dismissed in the service of what she prizes in the diary: “une vérité autre que celle contenue dans Passion simple. Quelque chose de cru et de noir, sans salut, quelque chose d'oblation.”

It is easy to believe that the diary has not been embellished; this really does seem to be a day-to-day account, concerned not with who said what to whom, how work was or what was in the news, but when S rings, how long he stays, what they do together and where. Here is a shortened version of Tuesday, November 15:

L'attente commence au réveil. … La peur qu'il ne puisse venir, tenaillante. … 16 heures. Je me souviendrai de ces superbes après-midi de novembre, pleins de soleil. Cette attente de S. Le bruit de voiture qui annonce l'entrée dans un autre temps, celui justement où le temps disparaît, remplacé par le désir. Minuit. … Il a trop bu. … Il veut faire l'amour, dans l'entrée, puis la cuisine. … Encore plus de désir.

The reader is spared nothing in terms of intimacy, to the extent that Ernaux lets us know that she lost her contact lens at one point only to find it on her lover's penis. As well as external details, she also records her thoughts, feelings and her lengthy dreams, which end up trying the patience of the reader; the temptation to skip is very strong. As the affair continues, S rings less and less often, and Ernaux is prey to more and more doubt, wondering if he loves her, when he will call, if he has another woman (another other woman); the tone is that of a neurotic adolescent. Ernaux is aware of her dependence on S, but reluctant to change the situation; she seems to want to put herself completely at his mercy and see what happens:

Je ne peux pas dire que les hommes me perdent, ce n'est que mon désir qui me perd, la soumission à (ou à la quête de) quelque chose de terrible, que je ne comprends pas, né dans l'union avec un corps, et aussitôt disparu.

The diary is clearly the work of someone who cares about writing and knows how to write, and there are passages of poetic intensity in the book. But it lacks the skill and coherence of Passion simple. Since literary merit or effort is not the issue, certain questions present themselves—why was this book published? Is the illustrious house of Gallimard functioning as Annie Ernaux's therapist? And what is it that makes Passion simple a better book? Se perdre is powerful, yet Passion simple does the same thing, only better; the way it mixes fact and fiction makes it more open-ended as a story, giving the reader more possibilities, and the craft in the writing combines with this to make it a more satisfying work of art. In this diary, Ernaux tells us at one point: “j'écris mes histories d'amour et je vis mes livres”. Perhaps it is again time to try the other way round.