Annie Ernaux begins with one fact: on a Sunday in June 1952, when she was twelve, her father tried to kill her mother with a hatchet. She uses it to examine her childhood in Normandy, in a small working-class family that ran a café-grocery, and the shame that followed, including class distinctions at her Catholic school and the gap between her family's customs and those of her classmates. She works with photographs, a school diary, and plain, restrained sentences.
This is for readers of memoir and social writing who are interested in how class and family secrets mark a person. It is short, direct, and often cited as a good introduction to Ernaux's autobiographical method, which won her the Nobel Prize.
Deep, inward-looking and contemplative; a moderate read.
Best for readers like The Mindful Reader. Which reader are you?
- Published
- 1997
- Publisher
- Gallimard
- ISBN
- 9782070747870
- Language
- FR
