Annie Ernaux

Another masterpiece of remembering from Annie Ernaux, the Man Booker International Prize–shortlisted author of The Years. In A Girl’s Story, Annie Ernaux revisits the season fifty years earlier when she found herself overpowered by another’s will and desire. In the summer of 1958, eighteen-year-old Ernaux submits her will to a man’s, and then he moves on, leaving her without a “master,” bereft. Now, fifty years later, she realizes she can obliterate the intervening years and return to consider this young woman that she wanted to forget completely. And to discover that here, submerged in shame, humiliation, and betrayal, but also in self-discovery and self-reliance, lies the origin of her writing life.

A Girl's Story

Everywhere on earth, with every day that dawns, a woman stands surrounded by men ready to throw stones at her. 

mayfly

Deep down, I remained steeped in the pleasure of unwrapping memory after memory. 

I am endowed by shame’s vast memory, more detailed and implacable than any other, a gift unique to shame. 

And go about it in the cruelest possible way: in the manner of people we hear talking about us through a door, referring to us as she or he, which makes us feel we are dying on the spot. 

What spontaneously comes to mind is: She is all desire and pride. And: She is wanting to fall madly in love. 

She has no defined self, but “selves” who pass from one book to another. 

She is dying to make love, but only out of love. 

I do not know if it has occurred to her yet that it has been a “night of love,” her first. 

She cannot stand this obtrusive stare; she is a child among others, guilty of misconduct. 

Again and again, I go over the scene, whose horror remains acute: that of having been so miserable, like a dog who begs to be petted and receives a kick instead. 

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