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Ernaux’s meticulously observed chronicles of French society are finally winning acclaim around the world. She talks about her relationship with her mother, feminism in France and being working-class
It’s rare for a writer to be self-conscious about the number of books lining the walls of their living room, particularly when they are one of France’s greatest living writers. But Annie Ernaux, whose sharp and often heartbreaking portraits of French daily life, class and society are enjoying a rush of interest in the English-speaking world, is aware that her bookshelves mark how far she’s come from a working-class childhood in rural Normandy. “You’ve read all this?” gasped one relative on a visit to her book-filled house on the outskirts of a 1970s commuter town north of Paris.
“It’s terrible to play yourself down,” says the 78-year-old Ernaux. But it was that “experience of limitation”, that unwritten rule “not to venture above your station in life”, that defined the tough world of factories and farm-workers she grew up in, she says. Ernaux’s mother, who features in much of her writing, refused to accept the supposed inferiority she was born to – she progressed from gruelling and greasy work in a margarine factory to running a small cafe-grocery and “was an exception in her social class”. Ernaux was pushed on by her mother, who had left school aged 12 but was a voracious reader and believed books and learning were the ticket to a different future. “My mother always washed her hands before opening a book,” she recalls. Continue reading...