In ‘A Girl’s Story‘, Annie Ernaux takes us to the time when she was eighteen years old, when she had just graduated from high school and was joining a summer camp as one of the group leaders. It was the first time in her life she was staying away from her family, especially away from the constant gaze of her mother. How this sudden freedom impacts her life, how she is able to stay up late, go to movies, drink with friends, act on her feelings of desire for the first time, and how she lost her innocence and virginity – all these are told in the first part of the book. The second part of the book talks about her time after camp, when she tries to train to become a teacher and how it doesn’t work for her, and how she leaves that and goes to London with one of her friends to work as an au pair and how she comes back after that and enrolls in university to pursue the study of literature.
‘A Girl’s Story‘ is different from other Ernaux books in three ways. It is double the size of other slim Ernaux books. It has a new translator, Alison L. Strayer. (I miss Tanya Leslie). The most significant difference though is this. In this book Annie Ernaux has clearly amped up her prose. There are sentences like this :
“But she, no doubt, was forgotten more quickly, like an anomaly, a breach of common sense, a form of chaos or absurdity, something laughable it would be ridiculous to tax their memories with.”
And this :
“But what is the point of writing if not to unearth things, or even just one thing that cannot be reduced to any kind of psychological or sociological explanation and is not the result of a preconceived idea or demonstration but a narrative : something that emerges from the creases when a story is unfolded and can help us understand – endure – events that occur and the things that we do?”
I don’t know whether this is because Annie Ernaux changed her writing style, or whether the new translator rendered it this way. I am leaning more towards the first, though the second one could be the truth. I love the new style, the long sentences and the beautiful prose, but they feel very un-Ernaux. One part of me, the Ernaux fan in me, misses the prose of early Ernaux, the short sentences, and the deceptively simple prose which was powerful.
I enjoyed reading ‘A Girl’s Story‘. It is about a time when a girl becomes a young woman and the kind of changes she goes through as a person and how she navigates that transformation. I liked the way Ernaux looks back at her past and treats her past self as a different person and tries to look at that person from the distance of perspective that time gives. It is fascinating to read.
I’ll leave you with one of my favourite passages from the book.
“The time that lies ahead of me grows shorter. There will inevitably be a last book, as there is always a last lover, a last spring, but no sign by which to know them. I am haunted by the idea that I could die without ever having written about ‘the girl of ’58’, as I very soon began to call her. Someday there will be no one left to remember. What that girl and no other experienced will remain unexplained, will have been lived for no reason.
No other writing project seems to me as – I wouldn’t say luminous, or new, and certainly not joyful, but vital : it allows me to rise above time. The very thought of ‘just enjoying life’ is unbearable. Every moment lived without a writing project resembles the last.”
I read this for ‘Reading Independent Publishers Month‘ hosted by Kaggsy from Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings and Lizzy from Lizzy’s Literary Life, an event which celebrates indie publishers for the whole of February. The edition of ‘A Girl’s Story’ I read was published by Fitzcarraldo Editions.
Have you read ‘A Girl’s Story‘? What do you think about it?
So interesting, Vishy! This was my first Ernaux and I had nothing to compare the prose with, and I still haven’t read enough to really comment. But I thought it was marvellous!
Nice to know that this was your first Ernaux, Kaggsy. Such a beautiful book, isn’t it? Alison Strayer’s new translations are beautiful and elegant, but very different from Tanya Leslie’s. I still keep thinking whether Ernaux changed her style, or whether her translators rendered her prose differently.
I love this review, Vishy. Change in translators is one of the things I worry about a lot when I read Women in Translation. When I read Elena Ferrante’s The Neapolitan Quartet, I was relieved to know that all the four books were translated by Ann Goldstein. And I am glad you are leaning toward the change in Ernaux’ writing style.
Among all the other books written by Ernaux, I feel like I am drawn to this one, and that’s especially because of the last passage that you have quoted. It’s poetic, and I absolutely love the way it deals with existential dread, and how our words can become our legacy. Just love it. Thank you for sharing, Vishy.
Glad you liked the review, Deepika 😊 So nice to know that all the books in the Neapolitan Quartet are translated by the same translator. Sometimes when the prose sounds different in translation, we are not sure whether it is because the author changed her style or because the translators have rendered it differently. I loved both the translations here, because they are beautiful in different ways – I love Tanya Leslie’s direct style with simple sentences, though Alison Strayer’s translation has more quotable quotes. I have one more Ernaux book which has a different translator and so it will be interesting to compare that translation with these two. Glad you liked that last passage. So beautiful, isn’t it? I can’t stop thinking about it.