Annie Ernaux is writing about her mother because it’s her turn to bring her into the world. It’s a love story between mother and daughter and a profoundly emotional tribute. Ernaux recaptures a portrait of a vital and complex woman prior to her decline into dementia - that world without seasons where every day, a person becomes less and less human. The scene opens with Mrs Ernaux’s very cold and clinical death in the nursing home. The ensuing memories of the morgue, choosing a coffin, and the lonely drive back to the family home in Yvetot, Northern France. Only the immediate family were present at the funeral and the forlornness and isolation of this really struck me. Death is such a communal event here in Ireland. Between the removal and the burial, hundreds would come to pay their respects to the dead.
Ernaux’s memories are unflinching. Her mum was a strong, forthright, hard-working, upwardly mobile woman of drive and ambition. She took herself from the farm to the factory to owning a grocery store. She controlled the money and the household and would dole out a slap as quickly as a term of endearment. Her overriding concern was to give her daughter everything she never had and would make any sacrifice if it meant a better life for her daughter - ‘she spent all day selling milk and potatoes so I could sit in a lecture hall and learn about Plato.' I can relate to this injustice. My mum was similarly selfless. It’s a short book but Ernaux covers the difficult adolescent years when Ernaux, thriving culturally and academically grows ashamed of her mum’s brusque manners and, elevated again through marriage, the awkward adult relationship and class rivalry etc. In her older life, her mum comes to live with her and without occupation or friends, a forced routine sees her world begin to shrink. Following a rta her mum loses her independence, interest in life, and self-respect. The final scene with her mum in brown stockings, emaciated thighs and body exposed is heartbreaking, then, finally, the last bond between Ernaux and the world she came from is cruelly severed.