The Story Archive

A Woman's Story

Annie Ernaux · 1988 CE · Narrative Non-fiction · French · Contemporary

A week after her mother's death in a geriatric ward outside Paris, a daughter starts writing the life: the factory girl from Yvetot who read books, who married, who ran the shop and pushed her child up and out, and then the last years of dementia when she wrote letters to herself. Scene, dialogue and the ordinary consolations of grief are withheld. Written in the same flat method as the book about her father, and meant to be read beside it.

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Lineage

Attributes

Genre
Psychological
Theme
MotherhoodMemory & TimeClass & InequalityDeath & Mortality
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
The Great MotherEveryman
Plot structure
ChronicleConfessionMeditation
Symbol / motif
The HouseThe Mirror
Conflict
vs Selfvs Society
Mode / tone
RealistElegiac
Culture / tradition
French

Closest analogues