Book Review

 

As per her signature style, The Years is a very intimate account of facts. Some reviewers argue this is a portrait, implying a description of one’s self, that could easily fall into an autobiography. If this book is indeed a portrait, it reflects not only the side of Ernaux personality, but also the personality and moods of an entire country, France. As an adopted French, I should have read this book in its original language. I found the translation a bit dry, especially in relation not to the narrative itself, but to the consequences of that narrative into the reader’s emotions. Ernaux knows her country and her culture very well. This is why in The Years she did not speak by the first person of singular, but by the first person of plural. It is a narrative based on a political and a social perception that belongs to an entire country, in a specific period of time that fortunately (or unfortunately) extend to these times. 

The author has always been an independent woman, one could say that with certainty. She has stated through all her books her own inconformity to the roles assigned to women, especially to married women. But this book is also about the struggle that women have faced in a France that seems to not want to give them the place they deserve. French were always behind the English, the German. At her time, Ernaux and her contemporary could not afford contraception. After, yes, women got advantages, equality, the vote, the studies, only to fall again in prison after marriage. ‘Marriage is a cage that not even an egalitarian country can break’, and ‘I have only one life’, used to think Ernaux. This brought her to the brink of her divorce. She envied the ‘divorcees’, and the ladies who walked alone on the streets, who did not need to pretend they were happy living in a circle of work, marriage, caring for a husband and children. I applaud that, and her bravery to call out a French misogynist society that has lost itself in the repetition of its own freedoms, completely forgetting that equality and the distribution of domestic work and the bearing of children is yet a matter to discuss. Women in France tend to go back to work quite early after becoming mothers, which from the outside could give the sense of equality. But it is of common knowledge the resistance of men to participate in lifting the weight of managing the house and children.

There is in general as well (for both men and women) a very perceptible inconformity with parenting. In my opinion caused by these inequalities. If there is something I criticized of the French is this inconformity, because marriage and parenting are not the same. There is a feeling of detachment, of teaching only manners, not love. Of trying to give their children away on holidays to their grandparents, also because there is nobody to take care of them during the school holidays, which are quite a lot (two weeks every six weeks). But this is taken as an excuse to get rid of the children as well. Yes, it is quite impossible for both working parents to take care of their children for that amount of time. But French people also want to be left alone. Annie Ernaux wanted to be left alone. Also as she became a grandmother, she wanted to be left alone —this is a feeling that a lot of French older women share, as they cared for their children basically alone all along their lives, why would they care for their grandchildren over again?— For me, this way of thinking is valid, but it is heartbreaking as well. 

The political realm: Important because of the changes that Ernaux witnessed and described with detail. Vichy, the protests of students in 1968, the extreme right and its discourse, the fight of the left to remain relevant in the political spectrum. Politics are omnipresent in every stage of life, and in all eras. Ernaux was brave. She took the stand of a critic. She has not been forgiven for this. This is the destiny for the one who dares to criticize France as a country, France and its manners. The habitudes of the French, more than the habitudes of a Government. The war in Algeria, the sweeping of the discourse, from: ‘Our French soldiers are dying in the battle’, to: ‘Innocent Algerians and French are getting killed because of the reticence to abandon a colony that does not want to be under French mandate’. The racism that foreigners experience in France, especially the ones of Arabic background:—The Arabs, who killed the French soldiers in Algeria—The Arabs, who destroyed French property, right in the periphery of Paris, who came to France and could not adapt.—The Arabs, who do not want to take off their veil, the white feminism confusing the matter with their own freedom. It is supposed to be a freedom of choice, not a freedom of the veil.La Famille Le Pen: At the head of everything Jean-Marie Le Pen, imposing his fascists and racists views since the 80s. He passed the torch to his daughter who has proven to be fierce and unrelented. Who is not going to go away until the extreme right is reinstated in France. 

A book of ‘us’, written for ‘us’ through the living experiences and thinking processing of Annie Ernaux. A 100% recommended. Luz