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It's been a loooong time since I read a book in French. Back in the day, when I was more disciplined and full of enthusiasm (lmao), I vowed to read at least 12 books in French a year. Last year (2023), I read two, one of which was a comic. Annie Ernaux might be single-handedly responsible that I will hit this old goal in 2024. She has reignited my passion and desire to read in French. And her work, short and to the point, is excellent for that. She writes so bluntly, so direct, it is easy to follow her and read her in the original, even when you're not a native speaker. And I usually love autobiographical vignettes, Yasmina Reza's Nulle Part is still one of my favorite books of all time.

I had read Ernaux before though. I read Une Femme, the memoir focusing on her mother, in late 2022. And so it seemed natural that I would follow it up with La Place, her memoir about her father. Ernaux often writes about her family, and I think she excels at it. It's not easy to be honest and vulnerable about such intimate measure, and Ernaux manages to walk the fine line between personal observations and giving you context and the bigger picture as well. Ernaux is a feminist writer, she's very class-conscious as well, coming from a working class family etc. It's a pleasure to read her musings.

Personally, I thought that Une Femme worked better than La Place because it gave you so many interesting insights into her mother's upbringing and her class struggles. La Place tries the same, but remains a bit more surface level.

The narrative opens with Ernaux visiting her parents in 1967, after receiving the message that her father has taken ill. He dies a few days after her arrival. Ernaux jumps back in time, to 1899, the year her father was born into a family of peasants with no land on their own in a village in the Normandie. At the age of 12, the boy is taken out of school to help his father on the farm. After the First World War, he finds work as a traditional rope worker in a factory where he meets his wife, Ernaux's mother. Later, he works as a roofer but after an accident at work, he is forced to give up this profession. Ernaux writes that he "lost his pride" then. The married couple decides to open a small general store in Lillebonne with a loan. In 1938, their first daughter dies at the age of six from diphtheria. Two years later, their second child, Annie, is born The family moves to Yvetot where they take over a farm and a general store, and manage to live quite comfortably.

Annie attends a Catholic school, and unlike both of her parents, is able to pursue higher education. This proves to be a curse and a blessing. She is able to socially advance through education, however, that precise fact also alienates her from her parents and their class. After school, Annie begins studying literature in Rouen and moves in wealthier and more educated circles. There, she enters a relationship with a student of politics, whom she later marries. Ernaux's father is happy that her daughter will have it better than him.

The most important moment in the book for me is towards the end, where Ernaux reveals that her father once told her this, after she introduced her husband to him: "Je ne t'ai jamais fait honte." (="I never shamed/embarrassed you.") It's such a simple sentence, but it is so loaded and heartbreaking. It reveals her father's biggest fear: of not being good enough for his daughter, of being a source of shame for him. It's so heartbreaking it actually makes me wanna cry. Because, of course, despite their distance, Ernaux was never ashamed of him. But for her parents, whose whole life motto, in Ernaux's eyes, seems to have been "Know your place and don't embarrass yourself", this was a big deal. Before reading this book, I wondered why it was titled this way and which "place" it was referring to. Now I know. Your place in the social hierarchy.

La Place is a short biography, fitting for an ordinary man. I often smirk when I see these big ass biographies of famous people (with 700+ pages) and think to myself that mine would barely be 100 pages long. There's just not that much of interest that happens in an ordinary life. And so I appreciate that Ernaux doesn't blow her father's life out of proportion, she doesn't make him more interesting than he was. However, I still cannot shake the feeling that she repeated herself too much. The only point she seems to have wanted to make through the narrative was the one about social advancement through education �� and whilst that's an interesting and valuable point, I don't see why its case had to be made 5+ times.

Apart from that, I really enjoyed reading this short work. I'll never forget sitting on the balcony, sun-bathing with book in hand. I had just voted that morning for the European elections (...let's not talk about the results, ugh), feeling happy that the rest of my Sunday would be utterly free. Reading French is always such a pleasure and, to me, it's the most beautiful language out of the ones I am able to speak. I'm glad that Ernaux reminded me of that pleasure. I'll definitely read more of her books... and from other French writers as well!