Ernaux’s text is the kind that one would love to be paid to write. Fragments of a life, bottled up in some kind of a chronological order, and served up on the plate. It’s a rambling, sub-Proustian voyage which captures the rapid scale of change post-war, the loss of innocence that came with the digital age, the sexual revolution and the highs of May ’68, the anti-climax that followed May ’68, and haunting of post-68. Ernaux’s personal experience is mapped onto the changing position of women within her society, one which allows her to break with the model inherited from her parents, and essentially relive her twenties in her forties. Everything is in there, from philosophers to politicians, from Concorde to 911. Small details like a solar eclipse unexpectedly resonate, “Blind faces raised to the sky seemed to await the coming of god or the pale rider of the Apocalypse. The sun reappeared and people clapped. There wouldn’t be another solar eclipse until 2081 and we would be long gone.” She’s also unafraid to address the rise of identity politics: “One no longer heard the words “goodness” or “good people”. Pride in what one did was substituted for pride in what one was - female, gay, provincial, Arab, Jew, etc.” There’s a laconic quality to much of her writing which allows Ernaux to flirt at the edges of her themes, never quite disclosing her personal take on them, letting them ride on the froth of her prose, leaving the reader never quite knowing where the wave will fall.
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