The End of Eddy by Édouard Louis.
Edouard Louis draws on his own experience to portray a boy growing up gay in a working-class village in northern France. Eddy's efforts to meet the community's expectations of masculinity expose the violence carried by those expectations.
The novel connects intimate shame with a larger social world. It asks what it costs to belong, what it costs to leave and how a writer can represent the people from whom he has had to escape.
Edition note: The cover and Barnes & Noble option are the Picador paperback (ISBN 9781250449801). Apple Books offers the Farrar, Straus and Giroux ebook (ISBN 9780374716394). Both use Michael Lucey's English translation.
