Author(s): Annie Ernaux

Literature

This extraordinary evocation of a grown daughter's attachment to her mother--and of both women's strength and resiliency--recounts Annie's attempt to first help her mother recover from Alzheimer's disease and, then, when that proves futile, bear witness to the older woman's gradual decline and her own experience as a daughter losing a beloved parent. I Remain in Darkness is a new high-water mark for Ernaux, surging with raw emotional power and her sublime ability to use language to apprehend her own life's particular music.

A powerful meditation on ageing and familial love, I Remain in Darkness recounts Annie Ernaux’s attempts to help her mother recover from Alzheimer’s disease, and then, when that proves futile, to bear witness to the older woman’s gradual decline and her own experience as a daughter losing a beloved parent. Haunting and devastatingly poignant, I Remain in Darkness showcases Ernaux’s unique talent for evoking life’s darkest and most bewildering episodes. 

‘Acute and immediate, I Remain in Darkness is an unforgettable exploration of love, memory and the journey to loss’
— Eimear McBride, author of A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing

‘Ernaux’s mother died of Alzheimer’s disease; like John Bayley’s memoir Elegy for Iris, Ernaux’s memoir catalogues the deterioration of a once powerful, almost totemic presence, a fall so cataclysmic that it cannot be analyzed or contextualized, only reported. In I Remain in Darkness (its title taken from the last coherent sentence her mother ever wrote) Ernaux abandons her search for a larger truth because, in the face of a loss as profound as that of her mother, all attempts to make sense of it have the feel of artifice.’ 
— Kathryn Harrison, New York Times Book Review

 Praise for Happening

‘The experience of living simultaneously on the inside and outside of your own body is very particular to the female experience I think – and not only in relation to pregnancy but in myriad other ways too. I like the measured, unforgiving way she works her way through the logic, or illogic, of that. I find her work extraordinary.’ 
— Eimear McBride, The White Review

‘Universal, primeval and courageous, Happening is a fiercely dislocating, profoundly relevant work – as much of art as of human experience. It should be compulsory reading.’ 
— Catherine Taylor, Financial Times

‘Ernaux’s work is important. Not just because of her subject matter, but because of the way she hands it over: the subtle contradictions; her dispassionate stoicism, mixed with savagery; her detailed telling, mixed with spare, fragmented text.’ 
— Niamh Donnelly, Irish Times

‘Happening is gripping and painfully inevitable to read – like a thriller. I felt close to Annie Duchesne, in her aloneness, in a way I’ve rarely felt close to a character in a book. Women will be grateful to Ernaux for her wisdom, concision, and commitment to writing about death and life.’ 
— Daisy Hildyard, author of The Second Body

Praise for The Years

‘The Years is a revolution, not only in the art of autobiography but in art itself. Annie Ernaux’s book blends memories, dreams, facts and meditations into a unique evocation of the times in which we lived, and live.’ 
— John Banville, author of Mrs Osmond

‘One of the best books you’ll ever read.’ 
— Deborah Levy, author of Hot Milk