I Remain In Darkness

(Hardback)

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Description

In the summer of 1983, Annie Ernaux's mother fell ill and stopped eating and drinking for several days. Her memory started to lapse and later the same year she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. This collection of relentlessly honest journal entries tracies the descent of Ernaux's mother into the depths of disease and reveals the author's own complex feelings of guilt and responsibility. Profoundly self-revealing, it is a work that will provide readers with insight into their own questions of loss and grief.

Reviews

A testament to the persistent, haunting, and melancholy quality of memory. New York Times

As always, Ernaux's marriage of oppositesdisgust and adoration, revulsion and emulation, dirt-physical and heady-theoreticaltakes place on the whitest of pages. Ernaux's opposites rip her in two in spite of her spare languages. ... [Her] art is in her fight with words. Los Angeles Times

Ernaux courageously bears witness both to complex multiple truths of family relationships and to the fierce persistence of family love. Washington Post Book World

Again blurring the line between memoir and fiction, Ernaux continues the story of her family in journal form Several recurring themes are woven throughout, notably those of time, art and the relationship between mother and daughter. Like Ernaux's other work (Shame;Simple Passion), this is "not literature" exactly, but "an attempt to salvage part of our lives, to understand, but first to salvage," poignant though limited in its reach. Publishers Weekly

Author Bio

Born in 1940, ANNIE ERNAUX grew up in Normandy, studied at Rouen University, and began teaching high school. From 1977 to 2000, she was a professor at the Centre National d'Enseignement par Correspondance. Her books, in particularA Man's PlaceandA Woman's Story,have become contemporary classics in France. She won the prestigious Prix Renaudot forA Man's Placewhen it was first published in French in 1984. The English edition was aNew York TimesNotable Book and a finalist for theLos Angeles TimesBook Prize. The English edition ofA Woman's Storywas aNew York TimesNotable Book.