SOURCE: A review of Passion simple, in World Literature Today, Vol. 67, No. 1, Winter, 1993, pp. 152-53.
Specializing in French and comparative literature studies, Knapp is an American critic, educator, and the author of several critical books, including studies of Jean Genet, Jean Cocteau, Anaïs Nin, and Emile Zola. In the following, she provides a favorable assessment of Passion simple.
Minute and interestingly objective is [Passion simple,] the detailed account of the feelings, sensations, and thoughts a woman experiences as she awaits her lover's call or visit. Unlike Marguerite Duras, whose prose is imagistic, cadenced, meaningfully repetitious, and haunting in its verbal recordings and rerecordings of her protagonist's affects. Annie Ernaux's sojourn into sex is straightforward and classical, stylistically speaking. Rather than dealing with the mysteries surrounding the notion of passion, we are invited to share in the iteration of its harsh realities. In this regard, Passion simple is somewhat reminiscent of Cocteau's monologue written for Edith Piaf, Le bel indifférent.
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