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the complete review - fiction

Shame

by
Annie Ernaux

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

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Our Assessment:

B+ : sparse, small book, engaging, and well written.

See our review for fuller assessment.

  From the Reviews:

• "[An] affecting wisp of a memoir." - Richard Bernstein, The New York Times

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       Annie Ernaux is one of the more popular literary authors in France nowadays. Her short books, sparse prose, thoughtful considerations have met with great success there, and the books that have been translated have met with at least critical acclaim here. This is much like her others, just over 100 pages long, telling a simple story as the author looks back on her childhood and several of the defining events from that time. It is centered around the memory of her father trying to kill her mother, though that is too sensationalistic a description: the attempt is as shameful and half-hearted and frustrated as much of her family life is.
       It is a remarkable, deceptively simple book, and very well written, and Tanya Leslie captures Ernaux's tone well in her translation.

       Recommended, though it is probably not everyone's cup of tea.

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Links:

• Seven Stories
• Folio publicity page

• Kirkus Reviews
• The New York Times
• The New York Times Book Review
• Publishers Weekly

• The complete review's Annie Ernaux page
• Annie Ernaux site
• Nobel Prize in Literature, 2022

• Ce qu'ils disent ou rien
• Cleaned Out
• L'ecriture comme un couteau
• A Frozen Woman
• Getting Lost
• A Girl's Story
• Happening
• "I Remain in Darkness"
• Look at the Lights, My Love
• A Man's Place
• The Possession
• Simple Passion
• Things Seen
• The Years

• Yasmina Reza's Ernaux-like vignettes in Hammerklavier
• See also the Index of French literature at the complete review
• See Index of Books by Nobel laureates under review

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About the Author:

       French author Annie Ernaux was born in Normandy in 1940. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2022.

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