Annie Ernaux

Annie Ernaux's father died exactly two months after she passed her practical examination for a teaching certificate. Barely educated and valued since childhood strictly for his labor, Ernaux's father had grown into a hard, practical man who showed his family little affection. Narrating his slow ascent towards material …

A Frozen Woman charts Ernaux's teenage awakening, and then the parallel progression of her desire to be desirable and her ambition to fulfill herself in her chosen profession - with the inevitable conflict between the two. And then she is thirty years old, a teacher married to an executive, mother of two infant sons. …

With extraordinary voice and poignant bravery, this novel allows the reader to experience a 20-year-old woman's reflections as she lies suffering from a back-alley abortion. Denise Lesur, alone in her college dorm room, reviews her coming-of-age in postwar France and her passages in life from a middle-class upbringing …

Taking the form of random journal entries over seven years, Exteriors captures the feeling of contemporary living on the outskirts of Paris. Poignantly lyrical, chaotic, and strangely alive.