Read Yes
Length 112
Quick Review A very short yet punchy memoir about a woman reminiscing on the events of her twelfth summer, and how her perception was forever altered by the trauma.
Annie Ernaux is finally able to commit to paper the life altering event which shaped her life’s perspective. Since the event, she has been marked by a feeling of never ending shame. This book is different from others she has written. She had been able to name her hometown previously, but found herself unable to after writing the first page.
Ernaux starts the book out with a stunning sentence: “My father tried to kill my mother one Sunday in June, in the early afternoon.” Normally a writer would leave something like this for further into the book; however, she starts with this and uses the rest of the book to explain her life leading up to the event.
As the daughter of store owners, a religious zealot of a mother, and a push-over of a father in a small, rural town in France, Ernaux felt oppressed, confined, controlled, and watched. Ernaux was “lucky” enough to go to private school meaning a school in a convent. Her parents had a shop in their home. Her town was small full of watching eyes. These aspects culminated in having to always maintain a facade of perfection in order to maintain a good standing at school, keep her parents happy, allow the family to look perfect, and never stray from the path.
Her father, who had been nothing but acquiescent to her mother, lost it and held a scythe to his wife’s neck in front of his daughter, Annie. By the afternoon, everything went back to normal in the house. For Ernaux, nothing was ever normal again. She viewed life as before and after. She was constantly waiting for the next time; nervous she would arrive home to a disaster.
Though it’s a short book, it is relatable. Everyone experiences shame in one way or another. Shame is felt by people for different reasons in different ways, but it is a burden we all bear silently because we feel alone in our own shame.
Memorable Quotes
“We have no true memory of ourselves.”
“Politeness was the supreme virtue, the basic principle underlying all social behavior.”
“Believing and having to believe were the same thing.”
“For me the word private will always suggest deprivation, fear and lack of openness. Including in the expression private life. Writing is something public.”
“The worst thing about shame is that we imagine we are the only ones to experience it.”
“…that the shame will never cease and that it will only be followed by more shame.”
Title: Shame
Author: Annie Ernaux
Translator: Tanya Leslie
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Copyright: 1998
ISBN: 9781888363692
