Change

One question took center stage in my life, it focused all of my thoughts and occupied every moment when I was alone with myself: how could I get this revenge, by what means? I tried everything.

Édouard Louis has received international acclaim for his vivid, unflinching accounts of poverty and homophobia in his autobiographical novels, such as A Woman's Battles and Transformations and The End of Eddy. Now, in Change: A Method, he turns his keen eye upon himself, investigating his youth like never before: the people he idolized and emulated, the manners he adopted to blend in at elegant tables, the daily and nightly jobs he undertook to make a living, the injuries of the past and the impossibility of escape.

A question pulses, urgent and demanding: "Am I doomed always to hope for another life?" Louis mines emotion, true and deep to the core, as he addresses past friends, lovers, and selves, and attempts to belong, to be loved, to succeed, and-at all costs-to change.