For this Prix Renaudot-winning author, childhood was not just a time of life but a cottage industry. Taking the form of random journal entries over the course of seven years, Exteriors concentrates on the ephemeral encounters that take place just on the periphery of a person's lived environment.

I devoured – not once, but twice – Fitzcarraldo’s new English edition of Simple Passion, in which the great Annie Ernaux describes the suspended animation of a love affair with a man who is not free. She has also won the Prix Renaudot for A Man's Place and the Marguerite Yourcenar Prize for her body of work. All this – the suffering and anxiety of waiting, the brief soulagement of lovemaking, the lethargy and fatigue that follow, the renewal of desire, the little indignities and abjections of both obsession and abandonment – Ernaux tells with calm, almost tranquillized matter-of-factness [that] feels like determination, truth to self, clarity of purpose. Further along, on the same wall, I LOVE YOU ELSA and, in English, IF YOUR CHILDREN ARE HAPPY THEY ARE COMUNISTS.Ez a nyolc év az ingázásnak, a bevásárlásnak, a fodrásznál töltött időnek a történéseit örökíti meg nagyrészt, innen származik az élményanyag. Taking the form of random journal entries over the course of seven years, Exteriors concentrates on the ephemeral encounters that take place just on the periphery of a person’s lived environment. Born in 1940, Annie Ernaux grew up in Normandy, studied at Rouen University, and later taught at secondary school. In some of the books she tries to be almost ruthlessly unemotional, focusing on cold descriptions of events and relationships. I need to become involved in a lengthy, structured process (unaffected by chance events and meetings).

Nobody thinks in novel form, so as nice as it is, it’s not a realistic reproduction of the thought process. What would be of passing interest is if Ernaux waited a decade or two for the new town to “grow old,” and then repeated the exercise. it builds up into this really cool portrait of paris in the late 80s, as well as giving you an idea of how ernaux views the world in an even more raw and unfiltered way than her actual prose does. Again blurring the line between memoir and fiction, Ernaux continues the story of her family in journal form. I find myself turning the corner, hoping to run into someone I spoke to a few years ago, just to have the chance to strike up a conversation that will bring us back to those days.By upsetting our complacency, she encourages readers to continually question her writing, and thus art generally. Ponieważ to daje jej iluzję bliskości z innymi i pozwala się zastanowić nad tym jakie emocje w niej wywołują. Ernaux captures the feeling of contemporary living on the outskirts of Paris: poignantly lyrical, chaotic, and strangely alive.

I n a few years from now, in the middle of hypermarkets, we shall probably see cinema screens, promotional lectures on painting or literature, maybe even lessons on computers. Exteriors is in many ways the most ecstatic of Ernaux's books – the first in which she appears largely free of the haunting personal relationships she has written about so powerfully elsewhere, and the first in which she is able to leave the past behind her. This is the second or third book I've read by Ernaux, who seems to be a favorite of the British publisher Fitzcarraldo Editions, and it's easily the most enjoyable one I've read so far. In this memoire Ernaux sets out to relate her observations during her daily outings on the train, in the supermarket or the mall like a series of snapshots.But after that, Exteriors is void of emotion and meaning, focusing instead on the physical world — things, people, and their actions — a direct result and illustration of an overload of emotion. i also love how ernaux admits that she has put much more of herself into this book than planned, since "memories and obsessions subconsciously dictating my choice of words and the scenes i wished to freeze".