This narrative charts Annie Ernaux's teenage awakening and then the parallel progression of her desire to be desirable and her ambition to fulfill herself in her chosen profession--with the inevitable conflict between the two. And then she is thirty years old, a teacher married to an executive, a...
Read More about A Frozen WomanIn Exteriors, Annie Ernaux concentrates not on the essential details of a relationship with a family member or lover as before but on ephemeral encounters within the larger circle of one's environment and the hundreds of strangers who inhabit it. Here, she captures the feeling of contemporary living...
Read More about ExteriorsBarely educated and valued since childhood strictly for his labor, Ernaux's father had grown into a hard, practical man who showed his family little affection. Narrating his slow ascent towards material comfort, Ernaux's cold observation reveals the shame that haunted her father throughout his life...
Read More about A Man's PlaceUpon her mother's death from Alzheimer's, Annie Ernaux embarks on a daunting journey back through time, as she seeks to "capture the real woman, the one who existed independently from me, born on the outskirts of a small Normandy town, and who died in the geriatric ward of a hospital in the suburbs...
Read More about A Woman's StoryBarely educated and valued since childhood strictly for his labor, Ernaux's father had grown into a hard, practical man who showed his family little affection. Narrating his slow ascent towards material comfort, Ernaux's cold observation reveals the shame that haunted her father throughout his life...
Read More about A Man's PlaceUpon her mother's death from Alzheimer's, Annie Ernaux embarks on a daunting journey back through time, as she seeks to "capture the real woman, the one who existed independently from me, born on the outskirts of a small Normandy town, and who died in the geriatric ward of a hospital in the suburbs...
Read More about A Woman's StoryIn her spare, stark style, Annie Ernaux documents the desires and indignities of a human heart ensnared in an all-consuming passion. Blurring the line between fact and fiction, an unnamed narrator attempts to plot the emotional and physical course of her two-year relationship with a married...
Read More about Simple PassionMy father tried to kill my mother one Sunday in June, in the early afternoon begins Shame, the probing story of the twelve-year-old girl who will become the author herself and the single traumatic memory that will echo and resonate throughout her life. With the emotionally rich voice of great...
Read More about ShameMy father tried to kill my mother one Sunday in June, in the early afternoon begins Shame, the probing story of the twelve-year-old girl who will become the author herself and the single traumatic memory that will echo and resonate throughout her life. With the emotionally rich voice of great...
Read More about ShameSelf-regard, in the works of Annie Ernaux, is always an excruciatingly painful and exact process. Here, she revisits the peculiar kind of self-fulfillment possible when we examine ourselves in the aftermath of a love affair, and sometimes, even, through the eyes of the lost beloved.
Read More about The Possession