This paper focuses on Christine Angot's novel Pourquoi le Brésil? (2002), the narrative of which is driven by a stormy love story. Angot's controversial and arguably autofictional texts are rooted in - and express - the experiences of a contemporary female subject (the pleasures and pains of motherhood, the politics of heterosexual and lesbian relationships, even the trauma of father-daughter incest), at the same time as they relate (perform?) again and again the ups and downs of being a particular woman writing in contemporary France (the anguished process of writing, getting published, book signings, readings, media appearances and interviews, reviews and sales figures). In Pourquoi le Brésil? the male love-object, Pierre Louis Rozynès, a journalist for Livres Hebdo, is in fact a verifiable person in real life (the Livres Hebdo entry on the FNPS website lists Pierre-Louis Rozynès as 'responsable de la rédaction'). Moreover, the name of Angot's/the narrator's recently deceased (incestuous) father is also Pierre. My argument, which draws on performance art, trauma studies and work on incest as well as on literary and feminist theory, shows how, in this novel, the love story narrative is intrinsic to maintaining the momentum of uncertainty on which Angot's work hinges - a tension between fiction and reality, between Christine Angot the real-life author and Christine Angot, the narrator of the text. In the final analysis, I consider the ways in which this love story functions in the text: is it romance or betrayal? Or is it a trope for the writing process? Or a way of narrating trauma?