Summary

Ernaux states that young parenthood for a woman in particular suddenly threw that individual into disbelief about her own circumstances. Her past worries and her student days seemed so far gone, as if they had been associated with another person entirely. Visits from in-laws induced feelings of pride and adulthood even as they reminded one that one’s life had become entirely shared, and was not one’s own any longer. She writes that the sense of unreality was pervasive: “We were amazed to be where we were and to have all that we’d desires, a man, a child, an apartment” (91). In a photograph described by Ernaux, a young woman in the winter of 1967-1968 sits with her toddler son, fully absorbed in the family unit. Her concerns are now only about sustenance and hygiene, and “she feels she has deviated from...