In the book world, Hillbilly Elegy has achieved that status of "commonly understood shorthand used to describe (and sell) other books." And I'm not immune to its invocation: after seeing Returning to Reims called the "French Hillbilly Elegy" I immediately wrote up a special-order slip. Returning to Reims is celebrity-philosopher (only in France!) Didier Eribon's memoir of disentangling himself from his working-class roots and an investigation into his family's mutation from staunch Communists to far-right populists. It solidified my understanding of the sociological forces behind the political moment and left me curious to learn more about this alien-to-me milieu. Luckily, Édouard Louis, an acolyte of Eribon, has recently published his bestselling autobiographical novel, The End of Eddy, in the U.S. Like Eribon but a generation or two later, Louis grew up gay and poor in northern France. Eribon's academic ticket out was Philosophy; Louis's was Theater, and it shows in his natural storytelling ability. With vivid prose he artfully weaves bits of Eribon's theory into this harrowing coming-of-age narrative. And he humanizes the grimness of working-class lives with layered monologues in which his characters tell horrific tales with idiosyncratic timbres that make you want to laugh out loud. Louis was only 21 when he wrote this debut, and it doesn't feel like a one-hit wonder—it feels like he's just warming up. I've already filled out the special-order slip for his next novel, coming out here in May 2018.