WORDS AS STONES, ANNIE ERNAUX WRITER

Protagonists :

• Annie ERNAUX
• Jeanne CHAMPAGNE, stage director

In 2008, with the release of her book The Years, Annie Ernaux received almost unanimous recognition from the press as one of the major writers of our time. “The only true memory is material,” Annie Ernaux explains. All her books are built on concrete memory. For her, each place, each object, a photo, a song, an expression of the common language, an event, corresponds and reflects a period of time experienced. To her, life is a unique experience, but it is primarily a common place. This is why her writing speaks to us, touches us. No matter how unusual her story is, everyone can identify with it.” My books are the ultimate symbiosis between the collective and the individual” (Annie Ernaux).

She does not dissociate privacy from sociability. For her, it is never a matter of neither introspection, nor a narcissistic approach, but rather the transmission of a life experience. Besides, each of her books is linked to a specific living place, and to a theme. The Haute-Normandie, between Lillebonne, Yvetot and Rouen, has been and remains for her the decisive place of debuts, memory and writing. Like Cergy, where she currently lives, this region occupies a very special place in her work. Annie Ernaux gives us a sense of the passage of the years from the end of the war to the present through photographs of the places where she experienced the most important events of her life. This situational portrait of Annie Ernaux is also the story of an era.