Collection
Description
Upon her mother's death from Alzheimer's, Ernaux embarks on a daunting journey back through time, as she seeks to "capture the real woman, the one who existed independently from me, born on the outskirts of a small Normandy town, and who died in the geriatric ward of a hospital in the suburbs of Paris." She explores the bond between mother and daughter, tenuous and unshakable at once, the alienating worlds that separate them, and the inescapable truth that we must lose the ones we love. In this quietly powerful tribute, Ernaux attempts to do her mother the greatest justice she can: to portray her as the individual she was. She writes, "I believe I am writing about my mother because it is my turn to bring her into the world.".
Media reviews
"A Woman's Story," which has been effectively translated by Tanya Leslie, offers a selective memoir of a mother's incremental deterioration due to Alzheimer's disease and her subsequent death. Though from the outset we are told dates and places -- the mother dies on April 7 in a nursing home in the
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Parisian suburb of Pontoise -- and reality elsewhere intrudes in footnotes for newspaper citations, we are spared proper names. Even the ghosts of a once-large farming family remain anonymous, though we learn that attrition caused by alcoholism and other afflictions left few witnesses at this woman's grave. Among them, however, is the stricken narrator, who decides that a life distilled to an inventory of belongings assembled in a plastic bag, courtesy of the nursing home, must, through a form of fiction, be brought back. Show Less
Awards
LA Times Book Prize (Finalist — Fiction — 1991)
Language
Original publication date
1989 (French)
1990-05-31 (English)