Denise Lesur is a young woman waiting in her student room after an illegal abortion, and she looks back at the family café-grocery in a Normandy town where she grew up. Annie Ernaux uses harsh, coarse speech to portray her parents' shop, the quarrels between them, the shame of class difference and the gap that grew between Denise and her family as her schooling lifted her away from them. The novel is the first one Ernaux published and a rough draft of themes she kept returning to.
It will interest readers of Ernaux's later memoirs who want to see where they started, and anyone drawn to French writing about class and women's bodies. It is short and blunt, and it does not soften anything.
Inward-looking and thought-provoking; a moderate read.
Best for readers like The Story Seeker. Which reader are you?
- Published
- 2006
- Publisher
- Folio
- ISBN
- 9782070376001
- Language
- FR
