How Not to Write About Class

Édouard Louis was only twenty-one years old when his debut novel, The End of Eddy, became an overnight sensation. Taking its cue from fellow French writers such as Annie Ernaux and Didier Eribon, the memoir described the author’s upbringing in a small working-class community in northern France. From start to finish, its vision was unremittingly bleak. Here, brought to life in painfully exacting detail, was the reality of la France périphérique: a postindustrial landscape ravaged by austerity and caught in a seemingly unending cycle of violence, addiction, and abuse.