Things Seen

"Annie Ernaux was blogging about her daily life long before the blog was invented. If anyone can raise it to an art form, she can. . . . This is a beautiful translation."—Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times Discoveries
“Annie Ernaux somehow succeeds in expressing the personal, whether it be . . . a description of her terror during a tear-gas attack in the subway, or her references to the importance of the role of writing in her own life. . . . It successfully compels the reader to reflect critically on our current era.”—E. Nicole Meyer, World Literature Today
"Like a poet, Ernaux writes with dense, image-packed language; like a novelist, she seeks compelling characters to appear and disappear throughout her text."—Rachel Mennies, ForeWord Reviews
"Readers unafraid of mixing the personal and political, as in the works of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, will glean much here. And memoir readers of a more traditional bent may look at the world quite differently after savoring this book."—Travis Fristoe, Library Journal
"Beautiful and powerful."—Alison McCulloch, New York Times Book Review
“La Vieextérieure bears witness to the desire, the need to capture life, even the insignificant. It attests to the memory that we have of others, including strangers, and in whom Annie Ernaux searches for and recognizes herself. La Vie extérieure is also a book of assessment and indignation. The writer reacts to human distress, war, poverty, and to the arrogance of power.”—Johanne Jarry, Le Devoir (Montreal)
“La Vie extérieure perfectly illustrates writing’s raison d’être. . . . Annie Ernaux transcribes scenes from the RER, the welfare office, and the check-out at the supermarket; things noted on television and radio; insignificant gestures and words that bring the writer’s agitation, indignation, and anger to the surface.”—Christine Rousseau, Le Monde (Paris)