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Published February 13th 2019 by Fitzcarraldo Editions (first published March 14th 2000)
Original Title: L'évènement
Memoir / Library
It was recommended at bookclub, and well it was short one! Just what I needed, I finished it in an hour.
It is the story of how she in the 60s tried to get an abortion. But it was illegal, and she tried and tried to find one. She even tried a knitting needle on herself, and then she went to some quack and later ended up in the hospital. And it was harrowing.
It was a constant stream of memories without a break, and it turned out to be really interesting, and so very NOW.
In 1963, Annie Ernaux, 23 and unattached, realizes she is pregnant. Shame arises in her like a plague: understanding that her pregnancy will mark her and her family as social failures, she knows she cannot keep that child. This is the story, written forty years later, of a trauma Ernaux never overcame. In a France where abortion was illegal, she attempted, in vain, to self-administer the abortion with a knitting needle. Fearful and desperate, she finally located an abortionist, and ends up in a hospital emergency ward where she nearly dies. In HAPPENING, Ernaux sifts through her memories and her journal entries dating from those days. Clearly, cleanly, she gleans the meanings of her experience.
so very now is right and scary now and then
ReplyDeleteWhat she put herself through in her despair was insane
DeleteOof this would be a hard one to read but I feel like an important read.
ReplyDeleteAnd so short, so it takes no time at all
DeleteSounds like it was a harrowing experience!
ReplyDeleteIt was
DeleteIt's not something I would usually read but it looks interesting
ReplyDelete:)
DeleteSO relevant. And still scary. Although at first I thought you wrote that she was a woman IN HER 60s. I was like - yikes! That's old.
ReplyDeleteOmg yeah I could NOT do that. Give birth then, nooo.
DeleteLol, she was in her early twenties
Done in an hour?! Glad it managed to handle the topic well in such a short time frame.
ReplyDeleteVery short, no breaks
Delete