Exteriors

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In the way the others have constructed “Found” novels from items on the Internet or social media, Ernaux was doing the same decades earlier, from real life.

Further along, on the same wall, I LOVE YOU ELSA and, in English, IF YOUR CHILDREN ARE HAPPY THEY ARE COMUNISTS. annie ernaux's observations on everyday life are so pertinent and refreshing and hilarious that they make me want to take my headphones off on public transport. i also love how ernaux admits that she has put much more of herself into this book than planned, since "memories and obsessions subconsciously dictating my choice of words and the scenes i wished to freeze". At one point in her life, Ernaux moved to a “new town” on the outskirts of Paris, and since it was a place with no history so far, she began keeping a journal to record history in the making.Of course, there’s something bleak about a new town already vandalized, but it also signifies verve and humanity. Izgalmas, mert úgy mesél Annie Ernauxról, hogy azt a világ apró rebbenései és a krónikás ezekről alkotott benyomásai mögé rejti, azaz egyáltalán nem személytelen.

What would be of passing interest is if Ernaux waited a decade or two for the new town to “grow old,” and then repeated the exercise. Writing that is confessional, possesses the hunt for clarity, quirky observations, and wit that stays with the reader till the end.

The move to the new town made Ernaux a commuter, so a rich and readymade source for her sharp observations was the Réseau Express Régional, the transit system that served Paris and its suburbs. Nos pedaços de uma prosa simples, mas acutilante, reflecte sobre a condição urbana na contemporaneidade de uma metrópole europeia, mas também sobre a sua condição enquanto mulher e enquanto escritora. For this Prix Renaudot-winning author, childhood was not just a time of life but a cottage industry. I look around the train, glancing the same old sea of faces staring at black mirrors (this is a tired description, and I’m leaving it there). Exteriors is in many ways the most ecstatic of Ernaux’s books – the first in which she appears largely free of the haunting personal relationships she has written about so powerfully elsewhere, and the first in which she is able to leave the past behind her.

So I think this is the last of the several brief memoirs or autofictions I have read and all in 2022 so far (! The book is broken up into years, from 1985 to 1992, but aside from that (and spaces between entries) each scene flows right into the next, like days and the various backdrops of routine. I find myself turning the corner, hoping to run into someone I spoke to a few years ago, just to have the chance to strike up a conversation that will bring us back to those days. All this – the suffering and anxiety of waiting, the brief soulagement of lovemaking, the lethargy and fatigue that follow, the renewal of desire, the little indignities and abjections of both obsession and abandonment – Ernaux tells with calm, almost tranquillized matter-of-factness [that] feels like determination, truth to self, clarity of purpose. Denise, a 20-year-old college student who has just had a back-alley abortion, lies alone in her dorm room and ponders her rejection of her well-meaning parents.I don’t think those years have any especial significance once you know when this was first published. Nem rossz megállapítás - állapítom meg, így utólag, hiszen a rögzített jelenetek jó része szúr, fájdalmat okoz, éles: fragmentált.