A restless little French novel about desire, humiliation, dependency, and trying to become someone new through someone else.

I Was Behind You follows a man whose marriage has curdled into resentment and self-disgust, and who begins an affair that seems, at first, like an escape hatch: erotic, glamorous, clarifying. Of course, being loved by another person rarely solves the problem of having to live with yourself. Very rude of life, honestly.

Fargues writes loves to write the way people narrate their own emotional chaos as destiny, the way romance can become vanity with better lighting, the way cosmopolitan adulthood often masks panic, boredom, and need. Good for readers of Emmanuel Carrère, Leïla Slimani, Catherine Millet-adjacent French confession, or anyone interested in novels where intimacy is treated less as redemption than as a diagnostic.

Pushkin Press paperback, first published in this English-language edition in 2009. First published in French as J’étais derrière toi in 2006; translated from the French by Sue Rose. Good second-hand condition with light cover wear/handling and mild page toning.