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The less money one has, the more carefully one must shop, making no mistakes. More time is needed. A list must be made. The best deals in the sales flyer must be selected. This is a form of economic labor, uncounted and obsessive, that fully occupys thousands of women and men. The beginning of wealth, of the levity of wealth, is discernible in the act of taking an item from a shelf of food without first checking the price. The humiliation inflicted by commercial goods: they are too expensive, so I'm worth nothing.

The first of Ernaux's I've read, and while it was her earlier work that earned her the 2022 Nobel Prize, this short book provided an introduction to her self-described "flat writing" style, here in journal form recording her observations and thoughts visiting the Auchan superstore near her home in a suburb of Paris over the course of a year. Many have described her writing as clinical and I can see that, but it is not disinterested, as her perceptions are frequently through the lenses of gender, class, and race inequities. From unlikely material, Ernaux has created a thought-provoking reading experience.

...the supermarket is linked to subsistence, the business of women, who have long been its main users. And that which falls within the domain of activities more or less specific to women is traditionally invisible, does not count-like the domestic work they perform, moreover. That which has no value in life has none in literature.