With unflinching accuracy, Annie Ernaux recounts her first sexual encounter – exploring themes of power, powerlessness, and submission. It is a wound that never heals. And it reflects the costly realization of one’s own worth. Summer 1958: Annie Duchesne turns 18. She works as a caregiver in a holiday camp. She finds her way into a clique, and together they celebrate parties and enjoy their youth. Annie is in love with H., with whom she has her first time. A night that leaves a lasting shock. Also because H. ignores her from then on, she doesn't know where to turn and becomes involved with others. She quickly becomes an outcast. What follows is exclusion, the mockery of others, her own shame. And silence. It takes Annie Ernaux over 55 years to confront this "memory of shame." "Annie Ernaux excels in her novel at becoming once again the internally torn, in love, anorexic, ambitious young woman she was when everything within her began to shake." Iris Radisch, Die Zeit.