I bought a book for £6.99 that was only thirty-five pages long. It was so short that I read it in a hot bath in only ten minutes. But I liked the cover, and what I read resonated with me.

Things like:

“I was aware that this entailed a kind of cruelty towards this younger man who was doing things for the first time. Invariably when he spoke of his plans for a future with me, I replied, ‘The present is enough,’ never mentioning that for me the present was only a duplicate of the past.”

and,

“The people he greeted on the street were always young, often other students. When he stopped to talk, I stood aside; they watched me sidelong. He tore me away from my generation, but I was not part of his.”

The Young Man / Annie Ernaux / 2022