A Woman's Story

‘Infinitely original. A Woman’s Story is every woman’s story. [Its] power rests not in the drama of its main event but in moments that might escape unnoticed, if not for a writer desperate to recapture every last image that her memory reluctantly yields of a lost loved one.’ — New York Times ‘[A] tender, tough and moving tribute to her mother’s life and death.… In this lovely short book Miss Ernaux attempts to explain – or, perhaps, merely to understand – the complex roots and blossoms of a mother/daughter relationship by describing the life of the mother she has just lost.’ — Washington Post ‘Ernaux has inherited de Beauvoir’s role of chronicler to a generation.’ — Margaret Drabble, New Statesman ‘Reading her is like getting to know a friend, the way they tell you about themselves over long conversations that sometimes take years, revealing things slowly, looping back to some parts of their life over and over.’ — Joanna Biggs, London Review of Books ‘Annie Ernaux is one of my favourite contemporary writers, original and true. Always after reading one of her books, I walk around in her world for months.’ — Sheila Heti, author of Motherhood ‘I find her work extraordinary.’ — Eimear McBride, author of A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing