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A review by cabble
The End of Eddy by Édouard Louis
5.0
The End of Eddy is a haunting, compassionate and difficult look at what it is to grow up gay in a poor rural village in Northern France where the whole town seems to be steeped in casual violence, racism, homophobia and a pervasive class-consciousness that renders everyone not living on the poverty line and wearing the hard nature of life like a badge of pride as an outsider not to be trusted.
The most remarkable thing about this book is that despite being largely autobiographical it is written entirely without self-pity or ego, Eddy never wallows in his situation, the self-hatred and determination to fit in that fails time and again is shown as the almost inevitable effect of the collective weight of opinion and disgust the village projects at him; in that frame the compassion shown towards his own family, as cruel as they are, shows that they too are victims of a society that has forced them into a narrow, unfulfilling and dead-end lifestyle.
The most remarkable thing about this book is that despite being largely autobiographical it is written entirely without self-pity or ego, Eddy never wallows in his situation, the self-hatred and determination to fit in that fails time and again is shown as the almost inevitable effect of the collective weight of opinion and disgust the village projects at him; in that frame the compassion shown towards his own family, as cruel as they are, shows that they too are victims of a society that has forced them into a narrow, unfulfilling and dead-end lifestyle.