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A review by thekategaze
History of Violence by Édouard Louis
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
tense
fast-paced
5.0
Oh man
Incredible autobiographical account of horrific trauma and its aftermath. Édouard’s grief manifests violently, within his own thoughts- seeing happy people makes him want to slap and shake them, to scream and spit in their faces, light them on fire (“even children, the frail or the sick”), and sad people earn the same fate because their pain isn’t as profound as his. He is obsessed with talking about his trauma, nearly immediately after it happens. He has to tell everyone, he waits in anticipation in conversations with a new person, politely letting them speak, practically vibrating with excitement to know that he will get to the chance to bring it up soon.
It’s not easy to admit to having these thoughts in the aftermath of trauma, no matter how common or understandable they are, no matter how many people in memoirs about trauma have done it at this point. It’s a sacrifice to give these details. It’s a level of honesty I find stunningly brave, every time I read someone do it.
This book is an extremely painful book and it helped me. also definitely worth noting that the writing itself is beautiful- this translation particularly is great- and I’m kind of shocked at it manages to pack so much into a pretty slim novel but not have it feel incomplete. Absolutely a masterpiece. A rare book that I immediately knew I would need the physical copy of (and thank you to my lovely friend who did get it for me 🩷) just so I could underline and highlight bits that resonate so much with me and, perhaps strangely, find comforting.
“The reality was I couldn't stop talking about it. Within a week after Christmas, I had told the story to most of my friends, but not just to my friends; I had also repeated it to people I wasn't close to, acquaintances or people I'd hardly met, sometimes people I only knew on Facebook. I bristled if they tried to respond, if they tried to empathize or give me their analysis of what had happened, as for example when Didier and Geoffroy suggested that Reda wasn't his actual name. I wanted everyone to know my story, but I wanted to be the only one among them who possessed the truth of what had happened, and the more I told the story, the more I talked about it, the more I felt that I was the only person, the only one, who knew what had really happened- this in stark contrast to the laughable naiveté of everyone around me.”
“In chronological terms, the first problem- for her, and for me, too—is not to have been forced into such-and-such behavior in this interaction, but to have been held within the frame of the interaction, within the scene imposed by the situation, that is, in the murky terrain of the bootleggers' house. It is as if the violence of that enclosure, the geographical violence, came first and the other forms of violence merely followed in its wake, as if they were no more than consequences, side effects, as if geography were a history that unfolded without us, outside of us.”
Incredible autobiographical account of horrific trauma and its aftermath. Édouard’s grief manifests violently, within his own thoughts- seeing happy people makes him want to slap and shake them, to scream and spit in their faces, light them on fire (“even children, the frail or the sick”), and sad people earn the same fate because their pain isn’t as profound as his. He is obsessed with talking about his trauma, nearly immediately after it happens. He has to tell everyone, he waits in anticipation in conversations with a new person, politely letting them speak, practically vibrating with excitement to know that he will get to the chance to bring it up soon.
It’s not easy to admit to having these thoughts in the aftermath of trauma, no matter how common or understandable they are, no matter how many people in memoirs about trauma have done it at this point. It’s a sacrifice to give these details. It’s a level of honesty I find stunningly brave, every time I read someone do it.
This book is an extremely painful book and it helped me. also definitely worth noting that the writing itself is beautiful- this translation particularly is great- and I’m kind of shocked at it manages to pack so much into a pretty slim novel but not have it feel incomplete. Absolutely a masterpiece. A rare book that I immediately knew I would need the physical copy of (and thank you to my lovely friend who did get it for me 🩷) just so I could underline and highlight bits that resonate so much with me and, perhaps strangely, find comforting.
“The reality was I couldn't stop talking about it. Within a week after Christmas, I had told the story to most of my friends, but not just to my friends; I had also repeated it to people I wasn't close to, acquaintances or people I'd hardly met, sometimes people I only knew on Facebook. I bristled if they tried to respond, if they tried to empathize or give me their analysis of what had happened, as for example when Didier and Geoffroy suggested that Reda wasn't his actual name. I wanted everyone to know my story, but I wanted to be the only one among them who possessed the truth of what had happened, and the more I told the story, the more I talked about it, the more I felt that I was the only person, the only one, who knew what had really happened- this in stark contrast to the laughable naiveté of everyone around me.”
“In chronological terms, the first problem- for her, and for me, too—is not to have been forced into such-and-such behavior in this interaction, but to have been held within the frame of the interaction, within the scene imposed by the situation, that is, in the murky terrain of the bootleggers' house. It is as if the violence of that enclosure, the geographical violence, came first and the other forms of violence merely followed in its wake, as if they were no more than consequences, side effects, as if geography were a history that unfolded without us, outside of us.”
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape and Violence