I gained such admiration for writers & the act of constructing a book in reading this; Ernaux's elegant A Simple Passion is lovely, erudite, & concise, & it came out of a period of sexual & romantic obsession which is chronicled in great detail in Getting Lost, her unedited journal from that time. Reading the journal can often be boring & tiresome (it is so hard, from the outside, to understand a person's specific desire for someone who seems