SOURCE: Gratton, Johnnie. “Towards Narrativity: Nathalie Sarraute's Enfance.” Forum for Modern Language Studies 31, no. 4 (October 1995): 300-11.

In the following essay, Gratton writes that although Sarraute's Enfance has most often been cited as an example of a text that implements the poetics of fragmentation, this reading limits the potential of Sarraute's autobiography as a narrative text.

It is a now accepted and well documented fact that Nathalie Sarraute's childhood autobiography owes much of its compelling quality to the way it implements a poetics of fragmentation.¹ It would be unfortunate, however, if critical attention were to remain focused on the fragmentary aspect of Enfance at the expense of its potential as a narrative text. This potential begins to emerge through two pervasive features: the episodic or micro-narrative status of the fragments themselves, and the fact that they are arranged in what is by and large a chronological order. Together these...