686 reviews for:

La Honte

Annie Ernaux

3.68 AVERAGE

katokaitlyn's review against another edition

4.25

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

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I love myself some Annie Ernaux. This reflection on shame and it’s connections to childhood, religion, daily life, and the compounding shamed of everyday existence remains relevant to audiences outside of 1950s France (and indeed outside of the 1990s when she wrote this reflection). Beautiful, poignant, and whiplash fast.

zsofielek's review against another edition

4.75

reflective medium-paced

michelles13's review against another edition

4.0

emotional reflective slow-paced

notoriousesr's review against another edition

4.25

emotional informative reflective fast-paced

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 In June 1952, Annie Ernaux’s father tried to kill her mother. It was an isolated event never repeated, but it was a turning point for the young writer in her understanding of herself and her family. In Shame, she turns an “ethnographic” eye onto her cultural and familial context to try to explain the events of a Sunday in June that changed her life.

The NYT Book Review was certainly correct in calling this book “careful” and “unflinching” in its specificity. Often, “unflinching” can mean cold and clinical, but Ernaux writes with a great deal of warmth and compassion, even when tackling such a personally difficult subject matter. She tenderly but completely excavates the factors that led to her lingering shame, and how the actual event of her father’s attempted murder of her mother was only piece of a larger jigsaw puzzle of failed respectability. I appreciated that she never came to one certain conclusion or a central “why,” which reflects how life is often without clear answers. The book, which is really more of an extended essay, also manages to be clearly structured despite having no headings, which is a feat in itself. I don’t think it’ll be a lasting favorite of mine, but I give it 4 out of 5 rosaries. 

lauradvb's review against another edition

5.0

challenging dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

nataliaramirez's review against another edition

4.0

reflective medium-paced

zoizzy's review against another edition

3.75

reflective medium-paced

guuran62's review against another edition

4.0

emotional reflective

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Då har jag läst ytterligare en bok författad av Annie Ernaux. Man kan säga att denna bok, i någon mån, kompletterar de böcker hon tidigare skrivit om sina föräldrar. Boken börjar med att författaren minns en händelse där fadern nästan dödar modern i samband med ett gräl. Händelsen skedde ett specifikt datum 1952. Minnet startar en berättelse om författarens liv under det året. 

Hennes föräldrar hade växt i ren arbetarklass med hade ambitioner att lyfta sig själva, men framför allt att barnet skulle bli något annat än dem själva. Därför sattes dottern i en privatskola istället för att gå den vanliga folkskolan. Flickan kommer därför att i sitt dagliga liv leva under knappa omständigheter men i skolan umgås med andra elever som i många fall har en annan bakgrund. Det skapar en vilsenhet hos flickan som hon har att hantera och leva med. 

Det är en kort och väldigt koncis berättelse som Annie skrivit fram. Texten är omväxlande minnesbilder och tankar som vuxen över den tid som var och hur hon kände det. 

lauranef's review against another edition

3.0

informative reflective sad slow-paced

emathecrow's review against another edition

2.0

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Je comprends l’idée d’où part l’autrice dans son livre, en revanche elle parle de beaucoup de choses dont je ne comprends pas le lien ni avec le sentiment de honte ni avec cet événement d’un dimanche de juin entre sa mère et son père (origine de la honte sociale qu’elle ressent) Il y a un lien mais celui-ci me semble obscur pour le lecteur. Vraiment pas le livre que je préfère d’ernaux