Shame

(Hardback)

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Description

A dazzling novel which tells the story of a twelve-year-old girl who sees her father attempt to kill her mother. The moment lives inside her, indeed it cuts through her like an axe. Over time, the memory cools until it is just like a snapshot one might carry in a purse but the cut is still there and eventually she finds that her whole being has grown around it like a tree that has been struck by lightning and survived. Over 100,000 copies sold in France.

Reviews

The careful, unflinching specificities ofShamegive voice to a resonant and universal truth; and Ernaux's particular discomfort is, most profoundly, that of being human.New York Times Book Review


Ernaux writes without beginnings or endings. Her stories have no 'arc.' But they tend to sit down next to you on that commuter train and will not leave, no matter how politely you ask them.Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review


With unsparing lucidity, Ernaux strips herself and her memories of any comforting myth and in the process, she forces us to face the jarring facts of being human.Publishers Weekly

Ernaux's scorching novels have a confessional, true-to-life aura about them, and she has often blurred the line between what is experienced and what is imagined. Here she bares her soul altogether, writing a terse and powerful memoir about the profound effects of the shock she sustained at age 12 one Sunday in June, when her father tried to kill her mother. This terrifying incident was never spoken of, and Ernaux, an obedient only child, was forced to cope secretly with her fears and shame for the rest of her life.Shameis Ernaux's lodestar, and she tracks its insidious hold on her psyche with the precision of a scientist, turning seemingly forthright descriptions of the small French town in which she lived into harsh revelations of its rigid social hierarchy, propensity for gossip, and insistence on conformity. Ernaux's beautifully crafted and unsettling narrative offers a telling glimpse of the era of French postwar reconstruction as well as insight into the impetus for a writing life.Booklist

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.