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A review by frazzle
The End of Eddy by Édouard Louis
3.0
This book has 'A novel' emblazoned across the cover, but I couldn't help reading it as basically the author's account of his own childhood. Why did he choose to call it a novel if it is principally memoir/auto-biography? No one believes memoirs include no fictional/imaginative elements, so why not use that word? The burgeoning phenomenon of 'auto-fiction' interests me a lot, why it's (relatively) suddenly come to dominate the mainstream of Anglophone literature. Does anyone have any thoughts about that?
Anyway, the book: Eddy shares his memories from his birth into a lower-working class, unsophisticated, loveless family, to when he leaves home to go to boarding school. His family subscribes to all the bad -phobias, notably homophobia. And if there's one thing Eddy has known about himself above all others, it's his attraction to men.
His house is falling apart around his head, he gets regularly beaten at school, his parents give him no positive affirmation. Louis' book critiques the systems of authority and social control that all but guarantee his misery - the responsibility lies not only with his parents.
What we're left with is bleakness itself. In fact that is the main criticism I would level at this book - there's no let up. In trying to paint a picture of abject childhood neglect (or even simply to recount his childhood faithfully), Louis' is less powerful for its lack of contrast. In the end I was a bit sick of yet another chapter of unhappiness to unfold in Eddy's life. Dare I say it even came across as a little whiney.
The translation, fitted for an American audience and thus using American linguistic tokens of class, grated on this member of the Commonwealth. But what it did hit home to me, however unintentionally, is the falsity of my natural image of France as cultured and sophisticated through and through.
I enjoyed the book's structure, grouped into chapters loosely by theme but still guiding us generally through his childhood.
Compared to All Down Darkness Wide (which Sean Hewitt happily bills as a memoir), I found The End of Eddy lacking. There wasn't the same poetic sensibility, the same comfort with leaving things unresolved. But this may be more of a comment on ADDW - fresh from winning the Rooney prize for Irish literature - than on Eddy.
Anyway, the book: Eddy shares his memories from his birth into a lower-working class, unsophisticated, loveless family, to when he leaves home to go to boarding school. His family subscribes to all the bad -phobias, notably homophobia. And if there's one thing Eddy has known about himself above all others, it's his attraction to men.
His house is falling apart around his head, he gets regularly beaten at school, his parents give him no positive affirmation. Louis' book critiques the systems of authority and social control that all but guarantee his misery - the responsibility lies not only with his parents.
What we're left with is bleakness itself. In fact that is the main criticism I would level at this book - there's no let up. In trying to paint a picture of abject childhood neglect (or even simply to recount his childhood faithfully), Louis' is less powerful for its lack of contrast. In the end I was a bit sick of yet another chapter of unhappiness to unfold in Eddy's life. Dare I say it even came across as a little whiney.
The translation, fitted for an American audience and thus using American linguistic tokens of class, grated on this member of the Commonwealth. But what it did hit home to me, however unintentionally, is the falsity of my natural image of France as cultured and sophisticated through and through.
I enjoyed the book's structure, grouped into chapters loosely by theme but still guiding us generally through his childhood.
Compared to All Down Darkness Wide (which Sean Hewitt happily bills as a memoir), I found The End of Eddy lacking. There wasn't the same poetic sensibility, the same comfort with leaving things unresolved. But this may be more of a comment on ADDW - fresh from winning the Rooney prize for Irish literature - than on Eddy.