Reviews with content warning for Eating disorder - A Girl's Story

Structurally, the novel is written almost in stream of consciousness form, with no chapters or parts. It reads almost like a diary of a much older woman reflecting on her youth, so the time gap in between can explain the almost erratic nature of the way she drops in and out of memories and reflections of them. I also think the translation at some points was…interesting. If I could read French, I think I would have preferred to read it in the original form, as some of the choices of words or phrases the translator uses were jarring to the point where I had to stop in the middle of a passage and try to decipher what she meant (specifically: “She has slipped into the autism of her desire for another night with H”). The objective lens through which the author recounts her own experiences as a girl of 17/18 is in many ways relatable, but also dangerous. As we get older, we look back on the person of our youth and many times it is like we are remembering a completely different person to our current selves. There are things we did and things we said when we were younger that make our older selves cringe and some things we even want to forget (Annie Erneaux says this herself in the opening of the book). For Erneaux, the added factor of shame that permeates the rest of her life from a brief “affair” is the result of not only the external shame wielded against her by her peers at the camp at S, but also the shame that comes from inside her. It is arguably this internal shame that leeches onto her and keeps the girl of 1958 with her for the rest of her life, like a ghost. Erneaux’s musings on the nature of shame and how it affects your life were profound, and some of the most poignant points of her book. However, the objectivity through which she writes about her own experiences places the onus of responsibility on an unidentifiable “other,” a girl who in adulthood cannot be held accountable for any of the aftermath of the events of her previous life. The self-destructiveness of this girl as she matured from the summer at S, alienating friends and adopting an air of cultural superiority is removed from accountability by the author because she says so. The girl is not Annie Erneaux no more than Annie Ernaux is the girl. The exist now on separate plains. The author uses her old age to absolve herself of this girl, to finally put pen to paper and write about this girl of her youth and finally be free of her. But we don’t have such a luxury, we have to live with the experiences and the choices of our past and the shame it may carry.

Content Warnings