Ihana

Voldeed volkomen aan de torenhoge verwachtingen. Echt prachtig en fenomenaal en alles. Het is dat ik zo zuinig ben met 5 sterren.

No I did not read this in French. I just can't find the English title in Goodreads.

I quite liked it and found it easy enough to read (which helps me like a book). But it wasn’t so easy that it was empty. I read it pretty quickly. if this took place in a country i obsess over (say Israel) it would have taken MUCH longer as i would have been running like a crazy person with all the cultural references and i’d be looking all of them up on wikipedia and then following links in those articles and so on. but i didn’t care too much about almost all the events, magazines, brands, politicians, etc. mentioned. there were a couple that captured my fancy — the bank massacre .. things like that. the most powerful aspect of the book for me was this: i felt i was getting an understanding of women that i haven’t really had before. maybe she has a way of describing things that resonated with me. her talk about blood. how blood ruled her life and her friends’ lives as teens. She wrote about this incredibly powerfully in a way that gave me insights I had lacked before.

there was a lot of suburban malaise social commentary in this book. and i liked that. but i didn’t love it. there were moments though, sentences, snippets where her observations were transcendent

Fucking loved it.

Tous quatre se tiennent face à l’objectif, les corps et les visages immobilisés dans la posture fixée dès les débuts de la photographie, pour arrester qu’ils ont été là ensemble, dans le même absence de pensée autre que celle d’« être bien ». Au dos, Trouville, mars 1999.
—page 210

this is the first book I’ve read in French in a long time, & absolutely loved it. I read this article on NPR shortly before starting this book, & even with my extensive photography history knowledge I somehow missed / forgot that “During the German Occupation of France, the Nazis strictly prohibited outdoor photography; taking pictures without an official permit was punishable by imprisonment or death.” so the framing of this book with personal photographs described in detail, gives another dimension to this incredible read… plus is such a chilling story & shows so much bravery:

https://www.npr.org/2024/10/28/nx-s1-5157701/france-wwii-war-photos-mystery

have three others by her (& all also in French) queued to read soon, including L’usage de la photo, so am curious if / how that book will influence this one too!!

[all of her books that I’ve read since being on goodreads for now a year (both in translation or in French) are in so much gratitude to my beloved! &, also: photography, forever.]

Chapeau, Annie Ernaux. Highly original ‘impersonal biography’. I was captivated for the first half but tired of it at the end, maybe down to the increased focus on French elections, maybe the wrong book for the beach.

A mesmerising insight into what time means, how we can understand the passing of months and years, try to gather them, grab and release into the depths of our fading memory. How to put one's life in the wave of others', in waves of constantly changing meanings, products and switching mentalities, morals and habits. One of the main bones in the structure of the book is the returning question of the sense and the place of one's everchanging experiences, age and shades of the soul, how to explain the decades held in one's body.