I say that because it seems as if she wrote this book primarily to sustain the edge of her wonderful restrained, understated style of writing. She says she wanted to take a closer look at strangers she encountered in her own world, to see what they might offer her. One of the key observations, which Ernaux makes in the introduction, is that for twenty years she has lived in Cergy-Pontoise, a new town forty kilometres outside Paris. Overall I really like the writing style of Ernaux and the social perspective that is apparent in her writing. The train crawls along, as the autumn conditions in Toronto necessitate caution when navigating the open-space areas of the subway track.

i absolutely loved these journal entries (which may or may not be related to the fact that i myself have been making a note of such snapshots for as long as i can remember). Izgalmas, mert úgy mesél Annie Ernauxról, hogy azt a világ apró rebbenései és a krónikás ezekről alkotott benyomásai mögé rejti, azaz egyáltalán nem személytelen. Exteriors, Fitzcarraldo’s latest translation from the oeuvre of Annie Ernaux, consists of a series of fragmented paragraphs depicting things seen in the world, all taken from diaries kept between 1985 and 1992.Strangely enough, there exists another truth, the exact opposite: when we go back to a town we left a long time ago, we imagine that the people there will still be the same, unchanged. Exteriors is in many ways the most ecstatic of Ernaux's books – the first in which she appears largely free of the haunting personal relationships she has written about so powerfully elsewhere, and the first in which she is able to leave the past behind her. And tied together with the beautiful idea of our own life being projected on strangers, of seeking and getting a deeper understanding of the self by being observant about others.

Also the collapse of retail is clearly not effectuated in Ernaux her book, but can be seen sort of starting, with cashiers chatting, people to pick up trolleys being laid off and butcher visits as the heart of the social happening in the town. I need to become involved in a lengthy, structured process (unaffected by chance events and meetings). Because Ernaux has written about her mother ( A Woman's Story ), her father ( A Man's Place ) and herself ( Cleaned Out ), one can almost hear an anxious tremor in the narrator's (Ernaux's? This was a shorter and older work, also less personal than the auto fiction she is more known for, but it still is very much an interesting read.I was tired of wearing the same couple over and over again, but I didn’t want to blow the bank on something extravagant. In other words, the feelings and thoughts inspired by places and objects are distinct from their cultural content…a supermarket can provide just as much meaning and human truth as a concert hall. Ha együtt utaztunk volna, álltunk volna sorba a hentesnél, biztosan mást vittünk volna haza élményként. She talks about how, in New York, she saw Paul Strand’s photographs and was blown away by the fact that the subjects were “simply there,” and considered that to be “the ideal vision of writing; inaccessible.

Szerettem, mert más mint az autofikciói, és egy olyan életbe enged betekintést, amiről én a nyolcvanas években nem is álmodhattam. It was only after recording all these observations and evesdroppings that she became aware of how much of herself was included in the conversations of others.

This is the second or third book I've read by Ernaux, who seems to be a favorite of the British publisher Fitzcarraldo Editions, and it's easily the most enjoyable one I've read so far. It's easy for daily commuting and its related experiences to become boringly repetitive and uninteresting.