Second paragraph of third section of main body of text:
| La frénésie qui avait suivi la Liblration s’estompait. Alors les gens ne pensaient qu’à sortir et le monde était plein de désirs à satisfaire sur-le-champ. Tout ce qui constituait la première fois depuis la guerre provoquait la ruée, les bananes, Ies billets de la Loterie nationale, Ie feu d’artifice. Par quartiers entiers, de la grandmère soutenue par ses filles au nourrisson en landau, les gens se précipitaient à la fête foraine, à la retraite aux flambeaux, au cirque Bouglione où ils manquaient être piétinés dans la bousculade. Ils se portaient en foule priante et chantante sur la route pour accueillir la statue de Notre-Dame de Boulogne et la reconduire le lendemain sur des kilomètres. Profane ou religieuse, toute occasion leur était bonne d’être au-dehors ensemble, comme s’ils voulaient continuer de vivre collectivement. Le dimanche soir, les cars revenaient de la mer avec de grands jeunes gens en short qui chantaient à tue-tête, grimpés sur le toit à bagages. Les chiens se promenaient en liberté et s’accouplaient au milieu de la rue. | The frenzy that had followed Liberation was fading. All people thought about was going out, and the world was full of desires that clamoured for immediate satisfaction. Anything that comprised a first time since the war provoked a stampede – bananas, fireworks, National Lottery tickets. Entire neighbourhoods, from elderly ladies propped up by their daughters to infants in prams, flocked to the funfair, the lantern parade, and the Bouglione circus, where they narrowly escaped being crushed in the melee. They took to the road in praying, singing crowds to welcome the statue of Our Lady of Boulogne and walk her back the following day over many kilometres. They never missed a chance, secular or religious, to be outside with other people, as if they still yearned to live collectively. On Sunday evenings, the coaches returned from the seaside with tall youths in shorts clinging to the luggage roofs and singing at the top of their voices. Dogs roamed free and mated in the middle of the streets. |
One of Ernaux’ best known books, this is even more firmly autobiographical than most of her work, telling her personal story against the backdrop of politics and society in France – or is it the other way round? While on the one hand it gives the sense of a stream of consciousness flowing over seven decades, on the other it is punctuated by descriptions of photographs and moments of emotion and sex, bringing the personal to the political and vice versa. At the start I had a few moments of huh, I’d better look that incident up, and then later it was more hah, I remember that happening too; I felt that someone my age could write a book like this that I would enjoy even more, though it would be 27 years shorter. I felt fully immersed and engaged. The book is also mercifully short. Recommended. You can get The Years here.
This was my top unread book by a woman. Next on that pile is, believe it or not, The Great Hunger by Cecil Woodham-Smith.
