A Man's Place: Annie Ernaux

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A lesser writer would turn these experiences into misery memoirs, but Ernaux does not ask for our pity – or our admiration. It’s clear from the start that she doesn’t much care whether we like her or not, because she has no interest in herself as an individual entity. She is an emblematic daughter of emblematic French parents, part of an inevitable historical process, which includes breaking away. Her interest is in examining the breakage …Ernaux is the betrayer and her father the betrayed: this is the narrative undertow that makes A Man's Place so lacerating.’ This novel has left me cold. There are no emotions – rare case considering the novel is an elegy for the death of the father of the narrator (Annie?). In Happening, a stirring account of the illegal abortion she had in Paris in the early Sixties, Ernaux realised the power one wields in writing true stories that involve others. When she suffered a haemorrhage and was admitted to hospital, a young doctor treated her poorly. “If I had been told the name of the junior doctor who was on duty that night – 20-21 January, 1964 – and if I still remembered it, nothing would stop me from divulging it here,” she wrote.

Annie Ernaux and the brutal art of memoir - New Statesman

We can see how people in France expressed their feelings at the loss of a loved one in this book and why and how Annie's family did it differently from the general conventions at that time. Throughout the book I am reminded of my own father. I wonder if this type of writing promotes this convergence of remembrances. Or perhaps it was the similarities of their lifestyles. My father was taken out of school to work on his parent’s land at age 8; however, he lived at home until he married my mother. When I read Proust or Mauriac, I don't think they evoke the time when my father was a child. Its setting is the Middle Ages.” E insieme al dolore, la bellezza di queste pagine, che non se ne va, rimane, si ferma, entra dentro. Also I must note memoirs have never been my thing. and this one was no exception. But at least Ernaux’s are very short. Some interesting quotes here and there, but nothing memorable that will truly stay, at least for me.In distinguished society, grief at the loss of a loved one is expressed through tears, silence and dignity. The social conventions observed by my mother, and for that matter the rest of the neighborhood, had nothing to do with dignity."

A Mans Place by Annie Ernaux - AbeBooks A Mans Place by Annie Ernaux - AbeBooks

The few outbursts Ernaux permits her teenage self are invariably to do with language: “How do you expect me to speak properly if you keep on making mistakes?” Language was Ernaux’s father’s embarrassment, but it’s Ernaux’s, too. A book cannot capture everything – it can only do its best. Slowly and with difficulty, Ernaux’s fiction sets out to tell the story of her father against this matter-of-fact adage.Sparse observations on the impact of class and generational differences on how close one can be with a parent. The language of Ernaux is precise and captures the universal well No-one writes about family relationships with the nuance, both emotional and analytical, that Ernaux does, and such a reflective, self-critical perspective is even more precious. Her exploration of language in their household is sharp …It might initially be read as a cold portrait, but the emotions and passionate thought rage through the taut writing. Likened to Simone de Beauvoir for her astute chronicling of a generation, Ernaux’s prose is intimate and unforgettable.’ Mi portava da casa a scuola sulla sua bicicletta. Traghettatore tra due sponde, con la pioggia e con il sole. Forse il suo più grande motivo di orgoglio, o persino la giustificazione della sua esistenza: che io appartenessi a quel mondo che l'aveva disdegnato”.

La place by Annie Ernaux | Goodreads La place by Annie Ernaux | Goodreads

these french writers and their fragile lives enclosed in steely armour. the cliche is Passion but my experience has been Passionless Renderings of Puppet Lives. intellectual, très intellectual. Ernaux does write beautifully. she also writes like the Queen of Insects, studying her insect kingdom, watching and reporting on their movements, their scurrying, their little lives. how can such a good writer be a writer who leaves me so cold? still, the style is compelling if not particularly moving. Spare. Dry. Unromantic. the novel as a brilliant analysis, as a clinical dissection - with just as much warmth. if i were to judge a country based on its books, i would assume that France is draped in perpetual winter. the novel is apparently considered a national treasure. oh, you french people. so french! Ernaux’s bare-boned, fragmented prose style is often harsh on her subject matter. She observes her parents’ hard work and dedication to support their family with sympathetic snobbishness. Her father mispronounced the name of her school teachers, “as if the normal pronunciation implied that he was intimate with the closed world that these words evoked, a liberty he was not prepared to take”. Annie Ernaux’s father died exactly two months after she passed her exams for a teaching certificate. Barely educated and valued since childhood strictly for his labour, Ernaux’s father had grown into a hard, practical man who showed his family little affection. Narrating his slow ascent towards material comfort, Ernaux’s cold observation in A Man’s Placereveals the shame thathaunted her father throughout his life. She scrutinizesthe importance he attributed to manners and languagethat came so unnaturally to him as he struggled toprovide for his family with a grocery store and caféin rural France. Over the course of the book, Ernauxgrows up to become the uncompromising observernow familiar to the world, while her father matures intoold age with a staid appreciation for life as it is and fora daughter he cautiously, even reluctantly admires. Ma qui, nelle pagine di Annie Ermeaux, siamo ben oltre la vergogna: la figlia sente di far parte di un altro mondo e un’altra epoca, che non ha più nulla da spartire con il medioevo del padre. The text, released in an updated translation by Tanya Leslie, is a concise piece of autofiction: a portrait of Ernaux’s father’s life and death which stumbles, self-reflexively, at realising a complete conception of the man.Quizá su mayor orgullo, o puede que hasta la justificación de su existencia es que yo pertenezca a un mundo que lo había despreciado a él.” Note: In my notes at one point in the book early on I made this comment, ‘can’t believe what I’m reading...’. I was reading about the father’s childhood: