With unflinching accuracy, Annie Ernaux recounts her first sexual encounter – exploring themes of power, powerlessness, and submission. It is a wound that never fully 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 place in a group, celebrating parties together and enjoying their youth. Annie is in love with H., with whom she has her first time. A night that brings lasting shock. Also because H. subsequently ignores her, she feels lost and seeks connection with others. Soon, she is ostracized. What follows is exclusion, mockery from others, and 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, lovesick, anorexic, ambitious young woman she was when everything in her began to crumble." Iris Radisch, Die Zeit.