Name: Happening
Rating: 4.529411764705882 (34 reviews)
ISBN: 9781583222560

Annie Ernaux

The author recalls her traumatic experience with abortion as a young literature student in the early 1960s--an event that left her hemorrhaging in a Paris dormitory.

Happening

B.A. Bacigal

“I believe that any experience, whatever its nature, has the inalienable right to be chronicled. There is no such thing as a lesser truth.”

In 1963, Annie Ernaux, 23 and unattached, realizes she is pregnant. Shame arises in her like a plague: Understanding that her pregnancy will mark her and her family as social failures, she knows she cannot keep that child. This is the story, written forty years later, of a trauma Ernaux never overcame. In a France where abortion was illegal, she attempted, in vain, to self-administer the abortion with a knitting needle. Fearful and desperate, she finally located an abortionist, and ends up in a hospital emergency ward where she nearly dies. In Happening, Ernaux sifts through her memories and her journal entries dating from those days. Clearly, cleanly, she gleans the meanings of her experience.

Marco yauri 

Re read this one and gave ir 5 stars this time. Awesome.

no body horror is a match for an unwanted pregnancy, let alone one experienced without any resources or support -- monetary, physical, emotional. harrowing account, piercingly self aware of the class ramifications of everything it contains, straightforwardly honest prose.

she eschews "outbursts of anger", writing with placid and even detached tone explicit details of her abortion. her fear and resentment are not concealed, but delivered with the precision a therapist might use -- as indicated in the factual, understated choice of title "happening" (instead of "dying") belying the scope of devastation its brief pages contain. she squares her concerns in trying to balance remembering with writing, to render her account not only with honesty but with acuity, texturing with what she ate, wore and watched as much as what she felt and thought, "memory as material". this is no small feat.

scared for my life at the prospect of watching the film adaptation......

pranya

no body horror is a match for an unwanted pregnancy, let alone one experienced without any resources or support -- monetary, physical, emotional. harrowing account, piercingly self aware of the class ramifications of everything it contains, straightforwardly honest prose.

she eschews "outbursts of anger", writing with placid and even detached tone explicit details of her abortion. her fear and resentment are not concealed, but delivered with the precision a therapist might use -- as indicated in the factual, understated choice of title "happening" (instead of "dying") belying the scope of devastation its brief pages contain. she squares her concerns in trying to balance remembering with writing, to render her account not only with honesty but with acuity, texturing with what she ate, wore and watched as much as what she felt and thought, "memory as material". this is no small feat.

scared for my life at the prospect of watching the film adaptation......

I regret not discovering Annie Ernaux's work sooner. Her book vividly recounts her personal ordeal with abortion during a time when it was illegal. Her honest depiction of each moment is so compelling that I felt immersed in her story and shared her anxiety.

This got me thinking about the importance of women's rights regarding abortion and access to contraception. It's shocking to consider how many lives may have been lost due to illegal abortion clinics.

Bilge Ince

“I believe that any experience, whatever its nature, has the inalienable right to be chronicled. There is no such thing as a lesser truth.”

I regret not discovering Annie Ernaux's work sooner. Her book vividly recounts her personal ordeal with abortion during a time when it was illegal. Her honest depiction of each moment is so compelling that I felt immersed in her story and shared her anxiety.

This got me thinking about the importance of women's rights regarding abortion and access to contraception. It's shocking to consider how many lives may have been lost due to illegal abortion clinics.

farah farooq

iamazoo

Arianna

Cindy Lieberman

The author recounts an illegal abortion she obtained during her university days in France. Her spare and matter-of-fact prose is an interesting counter to the physical (and emotional) experience. I remember hearing similar stories of desperation (knitting needles, coat hangars, etc. ☠️) when I was in college. It’s terrible that women in some US states are being denied the power of choice and will have to revert to practices that previously left too many women sterile or dead.

Hellboy TCR

Well its about an abortion she went for, when it was illegal in France - I can tell you one thing, its a bit graphic, it reminded me of the similar scene in the provocative Russian movie "The Tribe" - its not for the weak hearted. While she won't tell us why she was so hell bent on going through all this, this is perhaps a perfect companion for "A Life's Work" by Rachel Cusk where the writer is wondering why the heck she decided to have a baby.

Tove Söderberg

Amazing  language, that enhances an already powerful story

Thea

"Maybe the true purpose of my life is for my body, my sensations and my thoughts to become writing, in other words, something intelligible and universal, causing my existence to merge into the lives and heads of other people."

A short one, but also a powerful one. This is the true story about a young, single woman desperately seeking an abortion in 1960s France. Annie Ernaux writes about her experiences in such a simple, yet moving way, and I ended up finishing this in one sitting, desperately needing to make sure the story had some sort of happy ending for her.

Happening

Reviews

Highlights