Change

Louis (The End of Eddy) returns with another scorching autobiographical novel, this time drawing on his efforts to break out of isolation and poverty. Eddy Bellegueule (Louis’s birth name) grows up in a rural French village rife with racial tension and violence, where his family often has to beg for food. At 14, a drama teacher encourages him to apply to a lycée in Amiens, 30 kilometers away, and he jumps at the chance. At the new school, he befriends a classmate named Elena, who invites him to meals at her family home. There, Eddy learns about cinema and literature and “how not to eat like a peasant.” His “new life” allows Édouard—as he renames himself—to “take revenge on [his] childhood” by striving to become a successful author like his mentor Didier, who encourages him to write. He also gets a leg up from a wealthy older man he meets in a bar, who helps him get into an elite Parisian école and pays to have his teeth fixed. Édouard calls his project of transformation a “permanent obsession,” as he regularly feels like an imposter and worries he’ll fail at school and have to return home. Having worked as an escort in Amiens and Paris, he expresses a singular view about the trade (“In making love with a man I rejected all the values of my milieu, I became bourgeois”). With frank prose and staggering insights, Louis makes the story of his metamorphosis feel vital and alive. This is irresistible. Agent: Jacqueline Ko, Wylie Agency. (Mar.)