This week’s assignment for Women Write Their Lives class at NYU is to read A Woman’s Story by Annie Ernaux. What a completely different experience from her work in A Frozen Woman, which we read last week. This book was roughly half the size, so I zipped through it and enjoyed it very much, but it didn’t grip me as powerfully as the other book did.
A Woman’s Story is her chronicling her mother’s life, from how she became the woman Ernaux came to know and love right up to her death after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. So much living in between.
Favorite passages:
This book can be seen as a literary venture as its purpose is to find out the truth about my mother, a truth that can be conveyed only by words.
And:
I believe I am writing about my mother because it is my turn to bring her into the world.
