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I’ve always sort of loved the phrase of praise about an author one loves that you “even read their grocery lists”as if even there you’d find some Joycean-type genius to glean or at least to simply be basking in their handwritten lettering. If Annie Ernaux is an author who you would—hell, I probably have—say this sort of thing about then you are in luck because Look at the Lights, My Love is Ernaux’s diary-like reflections on supermarkets and does, in fact, contain some shopping lists (coffee and cat food, if you were curious). Ernaux reflects back on the emergence of supermarkets—her first being in the London suburbs in the 1960s—and considers the social implications that come with such behemoths of consumerism over the course of two years that she keeps records of her thoughts while shipping in an . While it is always a delight to read the way she decodes the world, much of this feels a bit dated having been published in 2014 and only now translated into English by Alison L. Strayer, though this also goes to show how much the world has changed even in a decade and how normalized the concept of a superstore is. Anything Ernaux is always worth a read, and at 96 pages this is a fun little jaunt through her mind.

Growing up, superstores were just a normal part of American consumerism and never really seemed to stand out much for me. In Michigan we have Meijer which got its start here, as well as the usual Targets and Walmarts, so it was interesting to see Ernaux address them as something unique and worth dissecting. She begins her book, however, discussing that she feels superstores (okay, I also feel like nobody here ever uses the term superstore and just says the corporate name which is likely an indication on the US being so completely saturated by corporations capitalisming their way into every single nook and cranny of society) never get literary representation, which she theorizes is actually an erasure of women’s livelihoods.

��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.��

This was interesting to consider as I feel supermarkets have become backdrops for a lot of literature in the US, most notably Don DeLillo’s White Noise, where a character claims a supermarket ��recharges us spiritually, it prepares us, it's a gateway or pathway. Look how bright. It's full of psychic data,�� that supermarkets are full of ceremonial behavior, ��code words and ceremonial phrases.�� Supermarkets can serve an excellent vantage point into the undercurrent of society and these moments of reflection in Look at the Lights�� is when the book is at its best. Over the two years, Ernaux has a few interesting points to consider. She writes about the value judgements, such as warnings about shoplifting in the alcohol section but not the vegetables. Or she writes about how consumerism gets tangled up in ideas of showing affection:

��In the world of the superstore and the free-market economy, loving children means buying them as many things as possible��

Basic reflections on class:

��The humiliation inflicted by commercial goods: they are too expensive, so I'm worth nothing.��

Or her ongoing disdain for the self-checkout and being yelled at by a robotic voice over any errors she makes:

��On the internet I read that the scanning device is called a gun, and that consumers claim to be satisfied with the system, with the weapon that eliminates cashiers while at the same time turning us over to the discretionary authority of the superstore.
A simple political act: refuse to use it.��

She does not engage much with the staff or customers though, saying ��I am unable to step outside my status of customer.��

I do enjoy the line she had about how if you accidentally steal something by error at a self-checkout it doesn’t feel as bad because it’s just a machine. During college my roommate and I read Les Miserables at the same time and started a running inside-joke where we’d steal a single baguette through the self-checkout and declare on our way out of the store “tonight we eat like Jean Valjean��.

Ultimately, there isn’t much here for this to really need to be published as a standalone book beyond Yale University Press just wanting to put out anything Ernaux they had rights to following her winning the Nobel Prize in 2022, but it was still a plesant read. I love when she discusses topics of memory and retrospective investigation, which is probably why these reflections done in the moment don’t capture the same magic and even she admits ��I have trouble discerning and comprehending the present moment.�� Though her note at the end when she ceases to diary about the supermarket is classic Ernaux:

��As I do every time I cease to record the present, I feel I am withdrawing from the movement of the world, giving up not only narrating my days, but seeing them too. Because seeing in order to write is to see in a different way. It means to distinguish objects, individuals, and mechanisms, and give their existence value.��

This was a fun little read, and I certainly thought about it today while grocery shopping, passing through all the different sections of the superstore and reflecting more about them than I had before. Ernaux is such a gem, and I will continue to read anything she writes. Even her grocery lists.