A Man's Place

3

Praise for A Man’s Place

‘An unsentimental portrait of a man loved as a parent, admired as an individual but, because of habits and education, heartbreakingly apart. Moving and memorable.’

— Kirkus

‘An affecting portrait of a man whose own peasant upbringing typified the adage that a child should never be better educated than his parents.’

— Publishers Weekly

Praise for A Girl’s Story

‘Ernaux is an unusual memoirist: she distrusts her memory… Ernaux does not so much reveal the past – she does not pretend to have any authoritative access to it – as unpack it.’

— Madeleine Schwartz, New Yorker

‘Ernaux has inherited de Beauvoir’s role of chronicler to a generation.’

— Margaret Drabble, New Statesman

‘An exquisite elegy’

— Irish Times

‘For all that A Girl’s Story is intoxicatingly specific about time and place, it is also a story that belongs to any number of selfconsciously clever girls with appetite and no nous, who must, like Ernaux, reckon with the entanglements of sexism and sexuality. But it is above all personal. In reclaiming the girl she was, Ernaux becomes her own Orpheus.’

— Spectator4

‘Revisiting painful periods is hardly new territory for writers, but Ernaux distills a particular power from the exercise.’

— The New York Times

Praise for The Years

‘The Years is a revolution, not only in the art of auto-biography but in art itself. Annie Ernaux’s book blends memories, dreams, facts and meditations into a unique evocation of the times in which we lived, and live.’

— John Banville, author of Mrs Osmond

‘The author of one of the most important oeuvres in French literature, Annie Ernaux’s work is as powerful as it is devastating, as subtle as it is seething.’

— Édouard Louis, author of The End of Eddy

‘Ravishing and almost oracular with insight, Ernaux’s prose performs an extraordinary dance between collective and intimate, “big” history and private experience. The Years is a philosophical meditation paced as a rollercoaster ride through the decades. How we spend ourselves too quickly, how we reach for meaning but evade it, how to live, how to remember – these are Ernaux’s themes. I am desperate for more.’

— Kapka Kassabova, author of Border

‘The technique is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. She illuminates a person through the culture that poured through her; it’s about time and being situated in a certain place in history and how time and place make a person. It’s incredible.’

— Sheila Heti, author of Motherhood5

Praise for Happening

‘The experience of living simultaneously on the inside and outside of your own body is very particular to the female experience I think – and not only in relation to pregnancy but in myriad other ways too. I like the measured, unforgiving way she works her way through the logic, or illogic, of that. I find her work extraordinary.’

— Eimear McBride, The White Review

‘Universal, primeval and courageous, Happening is a fiercely dislocating, profoundly relevant work – as much of art as of human experience. It should be compulsory reading.’