The End of Eddy: A Novel
Written by Édouard Louis
Narrated by Graham Halstead
3.5/5
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About this audiobook
An autobiographical novel about growing up gay in a working-class town in Picardy.
“Every morning in the bathroom I would repeat the same phrase to myself over and over again . . . Today I’m really gonna be a tough guy.” Growing up in a poor village in northern France, all Eddy Bellegueule wanted was to be a man in the eyes of his family and neighbors. But from childhood, he was different—“girlish,” intellectually precocious, and attracted to other men.
Already translated into twenty languages, The End of Eddy captures the violence and desperation of life in a French factory town. It is also a sensitive, universal portrait of boyhood and sexual awakening. Like Karl Ove Knausgaard or Edmund White, Édouard Louis writes from his own undisguised experience, but he writes with an openness and a compassionate intelligence that are all his own. The result—a critical and popular triumph—has made him the most celebrated French writer of his generation.
Édouard Louis
Born Eddy Bellegueule in Hallencourt, France, in 1992, Édouard Louis is the author of two novels and the editor of a scholarly work on the social scientist Pierre Bourdieu. He is the coauthor, with the philosopher Geoffroy de Lagasnerie, of “Manifesto for an Intellectual and Political Counteroffensive,” published in English by the Los Angeles Review of Books.
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Reviews for The End of Eddy
249 ratings10 reviews
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Its comical, but not in the way the author intended it to.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is the story about modern life in the parts of France that are not Paris. The small towns were poverty, homophobia, and "tough guys" live. A French man recounts his past, and eventual exit from his small town. With stories about how his hometown, like so many small places, make it clear that queerness is unwelcome in thier city. Even from people born there.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5For an autobiography it was pretty good and interesting. If this was a work of fiction I would have ranked it much lower, because it was not self-critical enough.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Raw and unflinching, interesting to read this kind of writing from a working class and non-urban voice. The early sexual encounters are an amazing, if disturbing, read.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Crude account of growing up queer in working class France of the 1990s, written without much perspective by a very young author.Like a French + gay "Angela's Ashes" without the Celtic humor. I didn't "buy it."
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5simply and elegantly written (and well translated!!)
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This is a little book written as fiction but very autobiographical of the author’s life growing up poor, gay in France. It is also a coming of age and tells the awareness of his identifity, the effort to overcome his identity and then the coming to peace with that identity. I read this as part of the ToB but it got beat out by Dear Cyborg before I got to the end. It is a quick read. I would disagree with the author on one or two points but then, this is the story of his perceptions so it doesn’t matter what I think. Eddy was brutally bullied by classmates. He makes a statement early on that people think of the humiliation when they see someone being abused and not the physical pain. I think about the pain. I hate violence and the reason I hate it, is because the pain is so real to me. The author is a child of the nineties. I was surprised by the description of his poverty and working class childhood. It reminded me so much of my own experience which was in the fifties/sixties. I thought that there would have been some advancements just in general but apparently not in France.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An honest and eye opening story of a young man who begins to show effeminate tendencies at a very early age. In the rough and tumble working class town in France in which he lived, a factory town where drinking and late night brawls are the norm, Eddy Bellegueule at first tries to conform. Urged on by his parents, brother and sister to act like a man they arrange dates for him and although he goes along with their fix ups and tries to enjoy the company of girls he knows it's not right for him. Eddy comes to expect the daily embarrassment and beatings school bullies bestow upon him and even his father's verbal abuse. He learns, to be himself, there is only one thing he can do. It's just a matter of when to do it.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Part of TOB. A quick read and sad that people have to put up with such homophobia and abuse from it. But overall the book didn't really make that much of an impression on me--it was hard for me to relate.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A tough read but worthwhile, about growing up poor, gay and isolated in a blue-collar part of France. He gets that working class mindset and milieu. The bullying he experiences is harrowing and awful; his escape through education and theater is inspiring and feels true to life. I know this is a roman a clef but it is called a novel and marketed as fiction, so it's always a little confusing when it comes to how to review it. I loved it basically and plan to read it in the original French soon.