N - 12 | A Girl’s Story by Annie Ernaux

 Another masterpiece of remembering from Annie Ernaux, the Man Booker International Prize–shortlisted author of The Years.

In A Girl’s Story, Annie Ernaux revisits the season fifty years earlier when she found herself overpowered by another’s will and desire. In the summer of 1958, eighteen-year-old Ernaux submits her will to a man’s, and then he moves on, leaving her without a “master,” bereft.

Now, fifty years later, she realizes she can obliterate the intervening years and return to consider this young woman that she wanted to forget completely. And to discover that here, submerged in shame, humiliation, and betrayal, but also in self-discovery and self-reliance, lies the origin of her writing life. 

 

ID:  N - 12

Read More ...

F - 2336 | I Remain in Darkness by Annie Ernaux

An extraordinary evocation of a grown daughter’s attachment to her mother, and of both women’s strength and resiliency. "I Remain in Darkness" recounts Annie’s attempts first to help her mother recover from Alzheimer’s disease, and then, when that proves futile, to bear witness to the older woman’s gradual decline and her own experience as a daughter losing a beloved parent. 

"I Remain in Darkness" is a new high water mark for Ernaux, surging with raw emotional power and her sublime ability to use language to apprehend her own life’s particular music.

 

ID:  F - 2336

Read More ...

F - 2337 | Shame by Annie Ernaux

"My 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 fiction and the diamond-sharp analytical eye of a scientist, Annie Ernaux provides a powerful reflection on experience and the power of violent memory to endure through time, to determine the course of a life.

 

ID:  F - 2337

Read More ...