Book Review: A Girl's Story (2016) by Annie Ernaux

 Book Review

A Girl's Story (2016)

by Annie Ernaux

  I don't think anyone was shocked when Annie Ernaux, and avatar of French autofiction, won the Nobel Prize for Literature last year.  After all, Scandinavia is itself a hotbed of autofiction and you could probably argue that the French invented it.  Autofiction is itself uniquely suited to the internet era of relentless self-exposure. Although the roots of Autofiction trace back a half century at this point (1970's France is where the term was first coined), you could say that it took the internet and it's culture of self-obsession to really get a larger, international audience interested in these books.

    A Girl's Story will ring familiar to anyone who pays attention to influencer culture or youth culture- Ernaux's self protagonist is a young woman from a rural background studying at university.  From her current situation she reflects backwards on her adventures as a teen:  Experimenting with her sexuality as a camp counsellor (and being shamed and persecuted for it), dropping out of teaching school to become a nanny in London, shoplifting sprees with her nanny bff.  It sounds banal perhaps but there is nothing tedious about Ernaux's prose in translation.  I found myself fascinated with the depth of exploration of inner feeling.