Product Description
In a haunting, barely fictionalized memoir, the author of "A Man's Place" gives her most searing, revealing work to date. One Sunday, just after lunch, a young girl's father explodes in anger, and tries to kill her mother. The outburst is all over almost as soon as it happens, but the girl's image of her father in those few seconds cuts through her, a chilling, incomprehensible picture that won't go away.Amazon.com Review
"My father tried to kill my mother one Sunday in June, inthe early afternoon." You'd expect a book that begins with thesewords to be a raw, anguished account of childhood trauma, butprize-winning French author Ernaux disdains such American-styleobviousness. In order to explain why "that Sunday was like a veilthat came between me and everything I did," Ernaux focuses not onindividual psychology, but on "the codes and conventions of thecircles in which I lived, [which determined] the vision I had ofmyself and the outside world." In a town where a street addressreveals social class, where "showing off" is a mortal sin,where even the proper choice of words to describe feelings is rigidlycircumscribed, 12-year-old Ernaux was devastated by her father'sattack because "I had seen the unseeable ... we had stopped beingdecent people." To petit-bourgeois shopkeepers like her parents,for whom appearances were everything, such an incident was literallyunspeakable--the family never discussed it. Ernaux fills that voidwith a pitiless portrait of provincial France circa 1952, nailingeverything from its penny-pinching economies to its mean-spiritedgossip and casual hypocrisies, all governed by the all-importantquestion, "What would people think?" This is a memoir in theclassic Gallic tradition: lucid, spare, impeccably reasoned andwritten, completely devoid of self-pity. There's not an excess word ora facile emotion anywhere in her elegant text, which compels readers'sympathy all the more forcefully by never asking for it. --WendySmith ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Shame
A truly boring book.I don't need bodies strewn about to get interested in a book, but Ernaux utterly shuns narrative and gives us list after list of everything she can remember from the summer she turned twelve.The result is that no one comes alive in this book, not even the auther herself.

The universal is in the details
Shame should not be read until you have reaad both Positions and A Woman's Story, the individuals accounts of her father and mother's lives.Onlythen will the beginning of this work appropriately shock you: "Myfather tried to kill my mother one Sunday in June".Her response wasto be ashamed of her background especially as she was enrolled in schoolsbeyond her social class.The trip to Lourdes with her father is aparticularly vivid illustration of her relationship with her father thatcontrasts with the picture drawn in Positions.Again Ernaux's direct stylesays something universal about social position and what is hidden topreserve that position.

Shameless
I feel a bit full of shame for not being overly swept away by this memoir at the onset and I believe that is only because I'm immersed in the American tradition of the shameless individual tell-all, no-holds-barred,go-for-broke shock story.Yet,reading on, the reader does creep more andmore inside the child Annie's head to a disturbing effect--disturbing moreso because it is not Americanly-obvious--it is subtle and heartbreaking,highly intellectual and deeply felt.It is a work of great literature. ... Read more

Product Description
In the spare, elegant style that has won her international acclaim, Annie Ernaux writes of losing oneself in love then losing love itself in this, her standout work. Blurring the line between fact and fiction, an unnamed narrator plots the emotional and physical course of her all-consuming affair with a married man, providing a glimpse of the true meaning of passion. Featured in this impressive work from one of France's most important contemporary literary voices is a reading group guide as well as an original author interview. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Not in French
This is in the French Language section but does not clearly indicate it is not a French language book. If I wanted an English book I would not be in the French section. Get it right.

I am in love with this book...
I am an AVID reader and this little book was surprising sinful, decadently rich, and oh so hypnotic.The entire story is about a women waiting, waiting, and waiting for the moments when she can be with her lover.All of us have expereinced that hypnotic exhilirating rush we call love when we cannot get that certain someone out of her head.The author does exqusitie justice to those of us that have ever been haunted by another individual.This is a must read. I will read this book over and over again in the years to come.

If you've ever waited for a phone to ring.....
You wait for the phone to ring. That's your life, waiting. You never know when he'll call, so you leave your home as little as possible. Hair dryers and vacuum cleaners make noise that could drown out a ringing phone; you use them sparingly. And then, without warning, there's the voice you crave --- he can be free for a few hours without his wife getting curious.

In a panic, you bathe. Frantically clean your home. File your nails so there's no chance you'll leave a mark on him. Lay out drinks, ice, his favorite snack. And then the door opens and your life begins. You barely speak, this isn't that kind of relationship. Later, he looks at his watch. You sigh. He showers, dresses. A final touch, and he's gone. And your life once again turns to waiting.

That's a woman's story. (It's the rare man whose life revolves around an unavailable woman who has trouble finding a moment to call and has an even harder time arranging a rendezvous.) Indeed, it's Annie Ernaux's story --- a lightly fictionalized account of a two-year affair she had with a married Eastern European diplomat. The whole story takes just 64 pages. And nothing really happens; it's mostly waiting. But the waiting is so acutely observed that in France --- Ernaux lives in a suburb of Paris --- 'Simple Passion' was the #1 bestseller for 8 months, with more than 400,000 copies sold.

The appeal of the book is, if you will, how manly it is. How matter-of-fact. Writing, Ernaux tells us at the start of the novel, should be like sex. That is, there should be "a feeling of anxiety and stupefaction. a suspension of moral judgment." So you won't get any speculation about his feelings. Or if he'll leave his wife. No, this affair is about sex. It's about "lying in bed with that man in the middle of the afternoon."

The man, like the woman, is nameless. He's 38. He likes "Yves Saint-Laurent suits, Cerruti ties and powerful cars." He watches bad TV. He drinks. But these preferences hardly matter. For the narrator knows at the beginning of the affair something that most woman only learn at the end: "The man we love is a complete stranger." As is, perhaps, the woman. Something happens at the end of the book --- nothing dramatic, like a murder or even a confrontation, but I don't want to spoil the experience for you --- and we're forced to consider her anew.

Who is Annie Ernaux? You've probably never heard of her, but she's one of the biggest names in French fiction. Born in 1940, she grew up in a small town. She became a literature teacher in Paris. And, from her first book to her most recent, she had her style down pat: short, autobiographical books, so honestly told you feel she's scraping off skin with every word. She never presents herself as a victim or a hero; she just is. Her books win prizes. And, though they're chilly, they sell. Her humanity --- that honest expression of desire and weakness --- only looks simple. It's a bitch to write.

Ernaux says that passion is the luxury of adults. I think I understand what she means: It's time out of time, a shared secret, a deep and wordless acknowledgment of need and a gloriously hot way of satisfying that need. I think that's why women, in particular, gravitate to Ernaux's short, disturbing books --- they know they're real. How? Because, at one point or another, they've been that woman looking at her phone, praying for it to ring.

passion is the greatest high
My favorite book.It honestly explores the effects of passion, and does so with total economy.
It is both dramatic and zenlike at the same time.
Most writers believe in the "show don't tell" aproach, but only the best writers, most of them being in my opinion, French, have a way of telling that exceeds the showing.Ernaux, like Gide and Duras, offers a very processed view of a relationship which becomes an intellectual experience --despite it revolving around a physical love affair.Ernaux transportes her readers, not necessarily into the moments, but into the DRAMA of them --getting us inside this woman's mind and body and feeling the pain and exstacy of the many stages of obsession.
While reading this book, I often had to pause and just sigh.And when I completed this slim novel, just a couple hours later (I really took my time), I began it again.

The universal is in the details
Simple Passion is the account of a love affair with a married man told in the direct prose I have come to expect of Ernaux.She notes that her lifewas one of waiting, that everything other than their meetings becamesecondary.Her honesty forces her to admit that the affair was one ofpassion not of love.After he returned to his native country, shestruggles to rebuild a life that is built on relationships with others, onebuilt on life in general not passion.Ernaux is a master at making thedirect details of her experience resonate with the experience of humanityas a whole.I recommend this book (or any of her books). ... Read more

Product Description
In 1963, 23-year-old literature student Annie Ernaux realized she was pregnant by a man she was no longer seeing. As the first college-educated person in a family of storekeepers, she regarded her pregnancy as a social failure. Unsuccessful in her attempt to abort the baby herself with a knitting needle, she sought an abortionist, who carried out the task in a sordid Paris apartment. After expelling the fetus in a dormitory bathroom, Ernaux suffered a hemorrhage and nearly died. Happening revisits a trauma Ernaux has never overcome. Forty years later, she gathers the details of this experience from memories and journal entries, transforming the suffering, guilt, shame, and self-hate into universal happenings. ... Read more

Product Description
A Man's Place recounts the story of a daughter coming to terms with her formative years as she writes an unflinching portrait of her father's life and death. A companion work to Ernaux's powerful A Woman's Story; both. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

A stylistic tour de force
This thin book contains a "fiction"--it is shorter than a novella, but somewhat long for a short story.Perhaps one might call it a fictionalized memoir.In experience and scope it is a novel, that is, after one has read the lean 99 pages, one feels that one has experienced an entire life, such is the effect of Ernaux's distinctive prose.She writes:"I shall collate my father's words, tastes and mannerisms, as well as the main events of his life...No lyrical reminiscences, no triumphant displays of irony.This neutral style of writing comes to me naturally." (p. 13)

This book, and the companion volume, A Woman's Story, was a best seller in France and has become part of the national culture.What Ernaux has done and does so well is to bring to vivid reality the mundane details of the small town life of twentieth century France.Her style is deliberately "flat" without any striving for effect.There is no satire, and as she intends, no irony, no higher view; indeed the nameless first person narrator, whom the reader must take as Ernaux herself, makes no effort to romanticize any aspect of her story including the part she herself plays.She reveals herself as a creature of her culture and her class just as surely as her father was.

She is a secondary school teacher, apparently in her thirties, something of an incipient intellectual, with a two and a half year old son and a husband who also has nothing in common with her unschooled father.The story begins when her father's death at age sixty-seven goads her into recalling his life and her relationship with him.They are two people joined in blood but apart in both a social and a temporal sense.And this distance is part of what she explores.She speaks of something "indefinable," that had come between them during her adolescence, "something to do with class...Like fractured love."Perhaps we might call it the alienation of generations.He was proud of her because she was accepted by those who would not accept him.She had risen from the working class to the middle class, just as he had risen above his father's station as an illiterate peasant.

There are some intriguing curiosities.For one, the blurb identifies Ernaux as having grown up in the small town of Yvetot, while the narrative uses the quaint transparency "Y-" to identify the town, as though this were a roman a clef.For another, there is a sense of something resembling warmth between her and her father, but no more than that, and this "distance" is never really accounted for except as some inexplicable fact of life.Also, Ernaux's narrator thinks of herself as bourgeois and having risen above the station of her working class parents, yet they are totally bourgeois themselves; indeed more so that she, since they own their simple cafe and store and adjoining property in the small town, while she is the equivalent of a civil servant, her education paid for by the state so that she could be employed by the state.This ingenuous self-revelation persuades us of her honesty and guilelessness and lends a queer sort of very deep veracity to her story.

I will not call this a masterpiece, although I think all writers of fiction ought to read it for the magic of its style.She has quite a nice touch, without artificiality, without contrivance.

Tanya Leslie's translation of the French, often tested because of the large number of idioms used by Ernaux, is natural and very agreeable.

Also published under the title "Positions"
Positions or A Man's Place is an account of Ernaux's father from his beginnings on a Normandy farm, his military experience, his working in afactory, marrying, raising a child, and owning a small store.In short,his was the life of a "common man", a man unwilling to put onairs for his daughter but proud of her achievements.On the otherhand hewas proud of speaking French not the local patois of his parents.It isthe detail Ernaux chooses that develops a picture of the man: "...butin front of educated people he would remain quite or would pause inmid-sentence, adding 'You know what I mean,' with a vague gesture of hishand, willing the other person to finish the sentence for him."Awonderful book to read to see how a character can come to life on paper.

A touching look at a father-daughter relationship
Anyone who has ever felt a distance between themselves and a parent will be moved by Ernaux's life story told in the context of her relationship to her father.The book is an account of Ernaux's childhood in a small Frenchtown where her parents owned a grocery store/diner.As Ernaux grows up andattains a higher social status, the gap widens between her father andherself.Ernaux leaves the home, gets a teaching degree and eventually hasto come back when her father begins to die.Ernaux's writing is simple anddirect; she never overanalyses, she simply presents what she recalls asbest she can. This book has a genuine quality that renders it very moving,for everyone has regrets about the way he/she treated his/her parents, andErnaux's attempt to repent or reconcile is easy to relate to. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (1)

Ernaux has done it again
Precise, exact writing about jealousy and obssession after the end of a love affair.Ernaux excells at writing about the human experience in the most concise language imaginable.Powerful work.A quick, but long-contemplated, read. ... Read more

Product Description
Examining the conflict between wanting to be desirable and fulfilling personal ambitions, one woman's story of motherhood and matrimony shows how happiness, enthusiasm, and curiosity gradually disappear under the weight of daily routine until she becomes a frozen woman. IP. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Fascinating memoir
I recommend this book to everyone--women who fear marriage, women who are eager to marry, happily married women, unhappily married women, men of all sorts. It provides a fascinating, convincing portrayal of a loveless marriage, of how class affects our lives in a very real way. The book is focused, terrifying, depressing, vivid, energetic--everything you want in a memoir. If you're an empathic person, you'll admire this book.

A recommended read
I read this book in one sitting and found it fascinating.It was translated from French, but flows very well.I wonder what period in time this book is meant to reflect.The book seems autobiographical, and as the author was born in 1940, I assume that this is the era that character is experiencing - a time in which most women were expected to be happy to give up a career in exchange for marriage and children.

A Frozen Women is a interesting study of one woman's protest at being urged into becoming a wife and mother, a role for which she has no respect or desire.If this book had reflected the 90's or later (which I believe it does not), it would not have rung true, as today's women, for the most part, have more choices than they used to.

I really found myself feeling empathy with the main character, as even today, women are still often expected to bear the brunt of household and child rearing duties - jobs that don't seem to be highly respect or appreciated, and are often less than fulfilling.The main character's feelings of resentment and powerlessness have probably been experienced by many women, both in the past and present, especially women who desire an even partnership in marriage.

The ending left me waiting for more, however, and I wonder if Ernaux will be continuing what seems to be an autobiographical tale of a woman who dreams of liberation and equality.

A victim's self-pity
Annie Ernaux's Frozen Woman is the perfect type of the victim who cannot do anything but complain about her family, her social background, her husband... The writer - the book is autobiographical - hasn't got any sense of humour about herself and her writing is full of resentment and even shame. It is not litterature but testimony, like those you can read in Marie-Claire magazine.

A Frozen Woman a hot topic
I heard Maya Angelou once say good writing makes the reader think "I could have written that" because the text so accurately depicts common feelings.Ernaux has more than accomplished that in A Frozen Woman.Her description of the journey a young woman makes from independence and freedom to a stifled married-with-children life hits almost too close to home.The text is also written in a way that the reader seems to be as surprised at how much life changes for the narrator as the character is herself.I could not help but think of Reviving Ophelia while reading this book, tracing the metamorphosis of adventurous girls into frozen women

excellent insight about women, their ambitions, and reality
What amazing insight Ernaux displays concerning the emotional, intellectual, and professional development of women on all levels!Nothing is held back as she illustrates in tormenting detail the full story of a woman's existence. In writing about one woman, Ernaux produces a book which is a comprehensive commentary about the dreams, emotions, aspirations, and ambitions embodied in all womenas they face the daily demands of life and survival.Much more should be written about this topic and in this vein which does not shun nor exploit female emotion ... Read more

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Snippets of Life Dissected
Annie Ernaux, as usual, turns life's mundane events into a fascinating study of human nature and behavior. ... Read more

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Upon her mother's death from Alzheimer's, Annie Ernaux tries to recapture the life of her mother, "the real woman, the one who existed independently from me, born on the outskirts of a small Normandy town." In sparse but eloquent prose, Ernaux explores the mother-daughter bond, the alienating worlds that threaten to disrupt it, and the inescapable truth that we must lose the ones we love. Featured in this impressive work from one of France's most important contemporary literary voices is a reading group guide as well as an original author interview. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A daughter's story about her mother
Ernaux has fashioned a compelling tribute to her mother by telling the story through her eyes as a child but now filtered through her analysis as an adult.As children we experience life, especially the relationships of our parents, as they happen without much ability to synthesize the deeper meanings.As adults, sifting through the past, we can often see what those moments really meant.A deeper understanding can be gained by trying to inhabit our mother's shoes as we age and discovering not only what kind of person she was but what kind of person we are because of her influence of in spite of it.
Ernaux is first an honest writer adding no more words than are necessary to give the reader a full understanding of the events that shaped her life. She is second a writer of beautiful prose.

The universal is in the details
A Woman's Story is an account of Ernaux's mother from her beginnings on a Normandy farm, through working in a factory and running a store with herhusband, to trying, as a widow, to live with her educated daughter and herfamily.Mother was a woman of thwarted ambition who hoped to fulfill herambition through her daughter.Ernaux captured well the friction thatarose between them both as a result of the ambition and the resulting classconflict its fulfillment brought.In contrast to Positions, Ernaux'sportrayal of her father, this book spends more time on the relationships ofher mother to her husband and daughter.As in most of Ernaux's work herability to use a direct style and very specific details to reflect humannature as a whole is the prime reaason for reading the book. ... Read more

Amazon.com Review
With extraordinary voice and poignant bravery, this novelallows the reader to experience a 20-year-old woman's reflections asshe lies suffering from a back-alley abortion. Denise Lesur, alone inher college dorm room, reviews her coming-of-age in postwar France andher passages in life from a middle-class upbringing to what may be herlast day--a brilliant treatment of coming to terms with one'schildhood by one of France's most important and innovativecontemporary writers. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

effortlessly stylized
Typically, stream-of-consciousness type fiction picks at my nerves, but Ernaux's version of this style stays largely connecte. You aren't forced to jump around within the narrator's mind, instead the thoughts meld together in a pattern fairly easy to understand.

Her memories (I've read that this is largely autobiographical) of school & her parents shop, are absorbing & powerful- her blatant admittance of shame regarding the juxtopositon between life at home & life at school (the extreme difference in class status)- is brave as well as cringeworthy.

I admire Ernaux's ability to create a character that is in many ways unlikeable, yet at the same time understandable.She does an amazing job getting into the confused mind of a growing girl & the hypocritical shameful thoughts one is prone to at that age.

It was wonderful to read a not quite coming of age story set in France- the only reason it escapes the 5 star rating was due my boredom with the narrator's sexcapades- certainly a large chunk of a teenaged girls fixation in life- but I just didn't care that much about her 'redheaded boy'.

Recommended!

My favorite book...
Ernaux writes in an amazingly real, raw, "in your face" style which is not for the faint of heart...this is what draws me to her works. Ernaux's descriptions utilize all of one's senses, making you feel truly part of the story. Her description of the main character in the book, with all of her flaws and charms, is extrememly rich. This book is an exploration of gender and class, and about the inner dialogue of a woman trying to figure out who she is and where she fits in life.

Couldn't put it down
This book left me with a chilling feeling... the description is superb and the tales are often painful and often humorous, a voice we don't often get to read. Definitely recommend it! ... Read more

Product Description
Written in journal form, Annie Ernaux's account of her mother's steady decline spans a period of nearly three years. When her mother first becomes ill, Ernaux takes her in. Soon, it becomes painfully obvious that professional help is needed. Diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, her mother enters a nursing home, never to leave. As it explores the complexities of death and parent-child role reversal, Ernaux's latest work takes its place on the shelf beside John Bayley's Elegy for Iris and Roger Kamenetz's Terra Infirma. "As revealed by Ernaux, the details of a loved one's deterioration have such emblematic force and terror that the particular becomes universal." - The New York Times Book Review ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Brutal, Unflinching, uncomfortable Honesty
I have enjoyed all of Annie Ernaux's 'romans autobiographiques' in their original French, over the last few years, including the French original of 'I remain in Darkness', the rendering of a French title which literally translates as 'I have not come out of my Darkness/my Night'.

The concept of the oxymoronically-termed 'autobiographical novel' seems to be championed by Ernaux and other present-day French writers. Over the years, Ernaux has written very intimate texts about herself, her parents, significant life events and about French society as a whole. In one work, she recounts how, one Sunday afternoon when she was aged twelve, her father tried to kill her mother. In another work, while she is undergoing radiation and chemotherapy for breast cancer, her lover comments that she is the first woman he has been with whose vagina doesn't have pubic hair. In another work, she and her much younger lover take photographs, on the mornings after their lovemaking, of the clothes, shoes and other objects strewn randomly about the floor of their apartment the night before as they passionately undressed and made their way to the bedroom. In yet another text, Ernaux speaks openly about her affair with a Russian diplomat and her obsessive passion and jealousy throughout their affair.

But perhaps the most brutally honest and shocking image of all is that of the foetus which she flushes down the toilet as a young university student, following a horrific backstreet abortion.

I focus on the foregoing images because what I most admire about Ernaux is her fearless self-revelation. She regularly shocks her reader. She is as controversial and as provocative as her compatriot, Marguerite Duras, in the extent of her self-disclosure.

But does she merely set out to be controversial for the sheer hell of it? I believe not. Personally, she has inspired me to be similarly self-revealing in my own writings. So I have begun to write about personal areas, intimate spaces of my life which I would have previously considered it unthinkable to share. Perhaps to write about such issues is cathartic for Ernaux and for her readers.

Annie Ernaux's writings have given me the courage to speak publicly and write about the intensely private areas of sexuality, coming out, coping with depression and obsessive anxieties, dealing with the jealousy of others as well as my own jealousy, being bullied as well as bullying, my recurring nightmares about my parents who died within a few months of each other. Nightmares in which they repeatedly suffer, disintegrate and die. Death is rehearsed over and over again.

So if and when I write my own 'roman autobiographique', it will certainly be dedicated to, and inspired by, Annie Ernaux.

I welcome this and other translations of her works into English, as literary translation helps to spread the important 'memes' of the highly original, thought-provoking texts of writers such as Ernaux.

Vestiges of Pain

A short, almost miniature volume from the French writer Annie Ernaux, the author of Simple Passion, The Possession, and several other memoirs, essays and novels. I Remain in Darkness ("Je ne suis pas sortie de ma nuit") is the last sentence her mother ever set to paper, in the midst of her erratic decline.

The memoir is made up of unedited journal entries, most of them written while Ernaux was visiting her mother in a long-term geriatric hospital. The rawness of the journal is often electrifying, because nothing stands between the reader and Ernaux's reactions, her self-castigation, her horror at how far her mother has plunged into dementia.

She writes, "Her body is white and flaccid. I started to sob. Because of time passing, because of the past. And because the body which I see is also mine."

And this: "The disheveled hair, the hands searching for each other, the right grasping the left like an unknown object. She can't find her own mouth; every times she tries, the cake winds up to one side....I am dismayed at such degradation and bestiality."

These pages, Ernaux warns us, are not at all an objective report of her mother's last years. Instead, they should be read as "vestiges of pain." There are plenty of Alzheimer's memoirs in which the author puts the best face on this terrible disease. Not Ernaux. She leveled me in a hundred pages, and her book has stayed with me from the day I read it.

Gripping Perspective on Losing a Parent to Alzheimer's
Alzheimer's is a cruel disease for those who have it and even more cruel for those who know the sufferers.Everyone who knows someone who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's should read this book to prepare themselves forthe experiences ahead.You'll need all of your strength andpreparation!

The title is the last sentence the author's mother wrotebefore she died.One of the frightening aspects of the disease is watchingthe person discover the loss of faculties, as they occur.Soon, you arenot recognized, and the person can lose all of their possessions.They mayhave to be tied down to keep them from wandering off and getting hurt. Physical deterioration is often not far behind.

The book is a series ofnotes the author made on occasions when she was with her mother fromJanuary 1984 through April 1986, and includes a few days after her mother'sdeath.

You will find a lot of pain here.The author finds that she isrevolted by the affliction, at how her mother changes, by the memories shehas of things she should not have done, and in her own reactions to hermother's changes.As a result, there's a lot of guilt and remorse to dealwith.By reading how Ms. Ernaux went through this, you may have an easiertime forgiving yourself if you are subject to the same feelings in thefuture.

The book is filled with pretty direct stories and references tothings that can be upsetting:People exposing themselves, getting sores inprivate places, human excretion, unpleasant smells and sights, and roughlanguage.You will hear, see, feel, smell, and taste what the authorexperienced.In this area, I found the translation a little strange attimes.Several crude words would be used, then a reference would be madethat seemed to be employing a euphemism for a more direct word.Is thetranslation more or less crude than the author intended?I don'tknow.

The reason I did not give the book five stars is that it couldreally use a little more perspective than just the notes.Apparently, theexperience was so painful that the author decided to let the notes speakfor themselves.Perhaps in the future, Ms. Ernaux will choose to revisitthis work, and put it into more context.

Is this work contrived by a finewriter, or is it simple human drama?I'm inclined to think it is thelatter.Few would portray themselves and their mother this way simply toentertain readers.I could feel the searing pain as I read the entries.Ithink you will, too.

Another jewel - can one expect less from Annie Ernaux?
Annie Ernaux is an author whose appeal is difficult to define - she writes autobiographical prose that is sparse, clear, honest and a bit hard.In her very particular experience, she writes prose that is emotionallyuniversally true.

The mother we meet in "I Remain in Darkness"is a very different woman than we met in "A Woman's Place".Thestrong woman previously depicted descends into dependence. Written in theform of a dated journal, Ms. Ernaux traces her mother's descent intoAlzheimer's - first recognizing that her mother can no longer live alone,she moves her mother in with her; this is followed by the recognition thatshe can no longer care for her mother; finally, her mother dies in anursing home.

A simple and common experience.But Annie Ernaux in a slimvolume captures the changing emotions that follow the changes in hermother's situation in a way few authors can. ... Read more

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From two world wars to rapid industrialization and population shifts, events of the twentieth century have engendered cultural anxieties to an extent hitherto unseen, particularly in Europe. In Telling Anxiety, Jennifer Willging examines manifestations of such anxiety in the selected narratives of four women writing in French - Marguerite Duras, Nathalie Sarraute, Annie Ernaux, and Anne Hébert. Willging demonstrates that the anxieties inherent in these women's works (whether attributed to characters, narrators, or implied authors) are multiple in nature and relate to a general post-Second World War scepticism about the power of language to express non-linguistic phenomena, such as the destruction and loss of life that a large portion of Europe endured during that period.

Willging maintains that, while these women writers are profoundly wary of language and its artificiality, they eschew the radical linguistic skepticism of many post-war male writers and theorists. Rather, Willging argues, the anxieties that these four writers express stem less from a loss of faith in language's referential function than from a culturally ingrained doubt about their own ability, as women, to make language reflect certain realities. Ultimately, Telling Anxiety reveals the crippling obstacles of literary agency for women in the twentieth century from the perspective of those who fully understood the awesome responsibility of their work.

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Although the storytelling of any time rewrites itself, rewriting became a primary concern in the literature of the twentieth century, an eracharacterized as having quoted, reenacted, cannibalized, revised, redone, refurbished, and outright plagiarized the texts of earlier times. The modern obsession with literary reiteration manifests itself in a rather unique way in the narratives of Marguerite Duras, Annie Ernaux, and Marie Redonnet. These authors systematically and repeatedly rewrite their own texts, and in so doing, give evidence of three of the more salient aspects of twentieth-century French literature: a trend toward the representation of multifaceted selves, a desire to reevaluate the literary paradigm, and an acute concern for the unreliability of language. This book argues that the rewriting performed by Duras, Ernaux, and Redonnet moves beyond the tacit rewriting that occurs in any text toward a renovation of various features of the literary arena within which they circulate. Cathy Jellenik argues that all writing contains rewriting—an argument grounded in the theoretical apparatuses of Saussure, Bakhtin, Benveniste, Barthes, Kristeva, and Derrida. She then examines and interrogates the ways in which Duras, Ernaux, and Redonnet use rewriting to question and rethink the literary traditions they inherit. Jellenik suggests that the rewriting projects of Duras, Ernaux, and Redonnet promise to lead them, and their readers, toward the creation of a new literary aesthetic capable of responding to the questions of our times. ... Read more