I began to study French in middle school, at the age of 12. Anglophones often have a rough transition to learning the language: new grammar structures, words possessing genders, different ways to respond to being hurt (Aie!).

Improving my language skills has been a lifelong adventure. Often, impressing the French around me begins with discussions around their cultures and histories. Although I read the classics—Balzac, Hugo, Sartre—to name a few, contemporary literature often lags behind at university studies of French.

 Anne Ernaux deserves to be included amongst the classics. This year, her memoir, The Years, made the short list for the Man Booker International Prize, thanks in part to Alison Strayer’s beautiful translation of the book into English. Ernaux’s words flow effortlessly onto the page, as naturally and vividly as a river.

Through descriptions of photographs, Ernaux introduces the reader to various stages of her life, beginning during the Occupation of France in World War II until the near present of the early millennium. Years pass as she mentions the annual Tour de France and family holiday meals, characters of each event changing throughout her life. With age, her ideas become more liberal, sure of herself and feminist. We experience her marriage, her children, her divorce, her sexual awakening, her beliefs. Towards the end of the book, we feel her burning passion and need to write. Through her words, we remember events in our own lives; where we were, who we were.

I often wondered what a literature seminar in either French or English would look like discussing Ernaux’s work. Strayer notes Ernaux often employed the French word ‘on’ to include everyone, the closest English transition of ‘we’. Here, her memoir not only becomes her own story, but one of a generation. She includes habits and behaviors only revealed in our intimate thoughts, capturing society’s conception of health, sex, material objects, and so on.

Make room on your shelves for Ernaux; she deserves to be placed alongside her idols—Foucault, Beauvoir and Flaubert.

Thank you to Seven Stories Press for a review copy of The Years by Annie Ernaux, in exchange for an honest review.

Recommended to Whom: The student, the writer, the nostalgic, the historian, the feminist.

Source: Seven Stories Press, publishing fiercely independent political works.