A Woman's Story

Annie Ernaux, a recent Nobel prize-winning author, tells the story of her mother's life. She begins with her mother's death. Ernaux tells her mother's story clinically, from a measured distance, and this is an effective way to write.

Several lines caused me to gasp, to reread, to underline.

When Ernaux goes to the undertaker to choose a coffin, the undertaker tells her, “All our prices include tax.”

That little detail.

Of the funeral, Ernaux writes, “I wanted the ceremony to last forever, I wanted more to be done for my mother...“

I remember that feeling.

And then, after the funeral, Ernaux notes, “I would cry for no particular reason.” Yes.

Much later, when she drives past the nursing home where her mother lived, she sees a light in the window of the room her mother occupied and realizes another person is now living there. And she suddenly knows that one day she, too, will live in a nursing home, living as her mother lived in her last purposeless years. And, yes.

This is a very short book, only a little more than sixty pages. It is well worth reading.