French writer Catherine Cusset, who has lived in the United States for decades, where she taught at Yale University, has written a partially autobiographical novel that takes place in closed academic circles. The author has received numerous nominations for literary awards for the novel. The story is written in the second person, as a kind of report on the life of Thomas Bulot, which the narrator transmits to him himself. Bulot is a Frenchman who comes to America in the late 1980s to study, where he plans to earn a doctorate in Proust and slowly break into the academic sphere there. However, this presents him with many obstacles and trials, (too) slow academic progress, one- or two-year stays at various universities, where he first prepares his doctorate, then a book, and then begins to lecture. He becomes entangled in many romantic relationships, including with the story's scribe, who then remains his confidant and advisor in unclear decisions in matters of the heart. Regardless of the fact that it seems that Bulot will eventually reach his desired teaching job, his mental illness, a mixture of bipolar disorder and depression, intervenes, which once again thoroughly and fatally shuffles the cards... In short, a fluent and lively novel, spiced with French literature, that draws you into the academic milieu of American universities.