Lydia Davis

Moving across the country to take a job, a writer in her thirties finds herself absorbed in a complex relationship with a much younger man and struggles with its eventual breakdown and a long subsequent period of recovery. Reprint.

A Novel

The End of the Story

'It surprised me, over and over, to find that I was with such a young man. He was twenty-two when I met him. He turned twenty-three while I knew him, but by the time I turned thirty-five I did not know where he was anymore.' Mislabelled boxes, confusing notes, wrong turnings - such are the obstacles in the way of the unnamed narrator of The End of the Story as she organises her memories of a love affair into a novel. With compassion, wit and what seems to be candour, she seeks to determine what she actually knows about herself and her past, but we begin to suspect, along with her, that given the elusiveness of memory and understanding, any tale retrieved from the past must be fiction. Back in print at last, this is Lydia Davis's first - and so far only - novel. 'No contemporary writer has so bravely explored the severe elegance of the thinking woman.' Village Voice 'Brilliant.' New Yorker 'Astonishing.' Elle

The End of the Story A Novel