A Woman's Story

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La scrittura della Ernaux è talmente piana e senza fronzoli da apparire quasi sciatta, quasi non fossero che appunti frettolosi in un diario. Eppure la sua efficacia e la sua precisione sono innegabili. Questo breve scritto autobiografico riesce ad avere un respiro universale pur parlando di qualcosa che più personale e intimo non può essere. E colpisce dritto al cuore. Tanto di cappello. Central to her work is an awareness that the most intimate moments of life are always governed by the circumstances in which they occur—that probing the personal will also involve investigating the historical. This is clearest in “Happening” (2000), an account of an abortion Ernaux had in 1963. Early in the book, she describes going to see an acquaintance who is known as an activist for greater access to birth control. He tries to sleep with her. Then he tells her that he can’t help her. After she has travelled to Paris to obtain the abortion, she hears that “a woman who lived round the corner would do it for three hundred francs. . . . Now that I no longer needed them, suddenly, bevies of abortionists were springing up left, right, and center.” By the time Ernaux published the book, abortion had been legalized. But a victory in legislation does not make disclosure any easier. “When a new law abolishing discrimination is passed, former victims tend to remain silent on the grounds that ‘now it’s all over,’ ” she writes. “So what went on is surrounded by the same veil of secrecy as before.” The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Southern Woman's Story, by Phœbe Yates Pember The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Southern Woman's Story, by Phœbe Yates Ernaux, secondo me, è una delle grandi voci narranti dei nostri tempi, una maestra della scrittura. Contro lo sfondo della storia francese si staglia quindi la donna più importante nella vita della narratrice: la madre. Una figura imponente, figlia del suo secolo, della sua classe sociale, dell'educazione ricevuta. Una donna generosa, completamente annullata nel lavoro, ma sempre presente, sempre complice, almeno fino a quando la figlia non cresce abbastanza da entrare in conflitto con lei, da volersene separare, tornare, separarsi e di nuovo ritornare.

I just felt that I didn’t want anybody else’s opinion. I felt I knew how other people would handle it. I felt like it was my decision and I didn’t want to conflate that with other people’s ideas,” she says. Inizia quel percorso di incombenze, decisioni, scelte, burocrazia, che ogni morte si porta dietro nel mondo d’oggi. E che ha il potere di risultare sempre profondamente assurda, e sgradevole: ci si vorrebbe concentrare sul dolore, la perdita, l’assenza, e invece… My husband and I had the same level of education, we discussed Sartre and freedom, watched Antonioni's 'Those Who Play with Love' at the cinema, held the same left-wing views, didn't come from the same world. In his, one was not necessarily rich, but one had studied, had something clever to say on every subject, played bridge. My husband's mother, the same age as mine, had a slim body, a smooth face, well-groomed hands." The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance. Infinitely original. A Woman’s Storyis every woman’s story. [Its] power rests not in the drama of its main event but in moments that might escape unnoticed, if not for a writer desperate to recapture every last image that her memory reluctantly yields of a lost loved one.” –New York Times Book ReviewErnaux takes the maternal images and turns them over to write about the woman who existed outside of her, to give her a full existence and to talk about the life that defined her character. Ernaux wrote this lightly fictionalized memoir of her mother after she dies in the geriatric ward from Alzheimer's disease. She begins with her personal memories and fills in blanks for a mother born in 1906. The account is rarely sentimental (until the end) and often aloof as she seeks to capture the complex bond and contrast between her working-class mother (typical for her generation) and her own university education and feminist ideas. Non ascolterò più la sua voce. Era lei, le sue parole, le sue mani, i suoi gesti, la sua maniera di ridere e camminare, a unire la donna che sono alla bambina che sono stata. Ho perso l’ultimo legame con il mondo da cui provengo. This is more memoir than fiction, and begins with the death of the author's mother. Then, she proceeds to describe her mother's life, from beginning to end.

As I write, I see her, sometimes as a ‘good’, sometimes as a ‘bad’ mother. To get away from these contrasting views, which come from my earliest childhood, I try to describe and explain her life as if I were writing about someone else’s mother, and a daughter, who wasn’t me”. Anne-kız ilişkisinin karmaşık doğası; barındırdığı garip dinamikler itibariyle edebiyatın bayıldığı konulardan biri malum. Biz insanlar bir şeyi ne kadar çözemez isek, o kadar edebiyata malzeme ediyoruz onu; edebiyat üzerinden anlamaya, anlamlandırmaya çalışıyoruz. The prose of the book is quite straightforward like a biography but it is not a typical biography, though it has a clear, poignant narrative but it’s neither a novel, it is a remembrance of the life history of a strong, radiant woman through the history of war and economic crisis, from a sociological and literary perspective. The narrative has a rhythmic flow like music with each note sharply detached from the other, the author though writes about her mother but she has been able to cultivate restrained and detached prose, deeply moving account of life and death, youth and age, imaginations, and reality, a poignant love story. It’s a difficult undertaking .For me , my mother has no history .She has always been there .When I speak of her , my first impulse is to “freeze ” her in a series of images unrelated to time – “she had a violent temper ”Ben bu kitabı 52. sayfadan sonra çok zorlanarak okudum; annenin küçük bir çocuğa dönüşmesi, çocuğun başka seçeneği kalmadan o sonun gelmekte olduğunu bilerek ebeveyn rolünü üslenmesi ve sonrasındaki süre, kitabın en başındaki cenaze bölümünü okumaktan çok daha ağırdı bence. Bu kitabı şunlar okusun, bunlar okumasın diyemeyeceğim. O yüzden bunu göze alıyorsanız bence mutlaka okuyun. Kişisel etkilerine gelecek olursam, ben bu kitabı kapatıp biraz kafamı toparladıktan sonra yılın kalanında hiç planım olmamasına rağmen -ileri tarihli de olsa- bir uçak bileti aldım mesela. Here’s a professional review of Ernaux’s work, with pictures, because this is what you want to see, pictures of her with her parents: It is a decidedly female perspective from which Annie Ernaux tells the story. And like probably many girls, she thought she would have to be like her own mother when she grew up. This arc encompasses her own growing up and growing old. In the end, she takes on mothering duties for her mother in need of care, caring for the old woman who has become forgetful and dorky, feeding her chocolate like a little child. These are heartbreaking scenes that Ernaux puts to paper with her usual few strokes. Scenes in which she cries because her mother has become so different from her childhood. As countless women before her, Annie Ernaux had to helplessly watch on as her mother grew old, and eventually had to bit her farewell.