(Paperback)

In 1963, Annie Ernaux, 23 and unattached, realizes she is pregnant. Shame arises in her like a plague: understanding that her pregnancy will mark her and her family as social failures, she knows she cannot keep that child. This is the story, written forty years later, of a trauma Ernaux never overcame.

(Paperback)

'The triumph of Ernaux's approach... is to cherish commonplace emotions while elevating the banal expression of them... A monument to passions that defy simple explanations.'- New York Times

(Hardback)

A moving memoir from the author of "Simple Passion" and "Shame" traces a mother's tragic illness and the understanding reached between a parent and child as death nears.