“It’s the work of a novelist to tell the truth. Sometimes I don’t know what truth I’m looking for, but it’s always a truth that I’m seeking.” – Annie Ernaux.

It isn’t easy to look away once that truth is revealed.

Links are what Ernaux has always been after. She has been devoted to a single task: the excavation of her own life. In one, she describes a love affair. In another, the relationship between her parents. In another her sexual awakening.

Central to her work is an awareness that the most intimate moments of life are always governed by the circumstances in which they occur. That probing the personal will also involve investigating whatever else is happening around you.

The greatest chronicler of French society in the last 50 years, the fact that her mother always washed her hands before opening a book, is something you will never stop wondering about anytime you read one of Annie Ernaux’s many masterpieces.

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