Happening – Annie Ernaux (French)

Ernaux won the 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature. I found only one of her many books in my local library, and it was shelved in the non-fiction stacks. But the copyright page describes it as fiction. I can understand the confusion. Ernaux writes about herself – Happening, which was published in 2000, is about an abortion she had thirty-five years prior to the writing, when she was twenty-three. Her style is flat, devoid of embellishments. It doesn’t read as a novel – it’s more an exploration of a situation. We do get the emotions of Annie as a young woman (it’s written in the first person), but there’s a clinical feel to Ernaux’s approach. She even includes sections in parentheses, in which her adult self makes observations. Abortion was illegal in France at the time the events take place, and doctors – who were subject to imprisonment – wanted no part of it. From people Annie knows she finds little help, little understanding, little kindness. The impression I got was of a lonely young woman searching in a bleak, uncaring world. She even attempts to terminate the pregnancy using knitting needles. She’s finally put in touch with an old woman who performs “back street” abortions. It doesn’t go smoothly, and we get the unpleasant details. Ernaux never tries to make her younger self endearing. At no point does she refer to what she’s carrying inside her as a baby or a child; its potential as a human being never seems to enter her mind – it is only a foetus. Also, the father is not interested in helping her, but she had unprotected sex with someone for whom she had no emotional ties. The  book can be taken as a denunciation of the French anti-abortion law, but as such it is belated – when it was published the law had been revoked many years ago. Ernaux had a purely personal agenda: she set out to recreate – to relive – an experience that had great significance for her, and on those terms she succeeds. But do you want to accompany her?

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings: Sojourner at Cross Creek – Elizabeth Silverthorne

A good biography by someone sympathetic to its subject. Not that Rawlings’ flaws are glossed over (her over-drinking, her black moods during which she could say hurtful things), but all-in-all she was a remarkable woman. What I will concentrate on in this review is how, after many years of submissions and form rejections, she attained success as a writer. It began with her moving to Cross Creek, a remote area of the Florida Scrub. She fell in love with this world, and proceeded to learn about it – the animals, the plants, and, most of all, the people. Marjorie immersed herself in how the “Crackers” thought – their values, their outlook on life – and she kept notebooks in which she transcribed how they talked. She interacted with them as a neighbor; her house was not unlike the ones they lived in. She hunted, grew crops as they did. She could kill a rattlesnake, butcher a pig. So, when she turned to writing about the residents of Cross Creek, there was an authenticity. She was thirty-five when she submitted a story set in that region to a New York magazine – Scribners. It was a life-changing choice. A sophisticated audience was interested in the exotic world which, in Rawlings’ capable hands, was most definitely a real world. The story was passed on to the chief editor at Scribners, Maxwell Perkins. Max Perkins – the premier editor of his era. He wrote Marjorie, telling her that he thought the story was excellent, but he had many suggestions for revision. She found his suggestions sound, and made the changes. So began a relationship – and a friendship – that lasted until Perkins’ death. Marjorie would, under his tutelage, produce two enduring works – The Yearling and Cross Creek. She was introduced to just about everybody of importance in the literary world. But the negative aspect was that she developed a dependence on Max. After his death she would produce one novel, The Sojourner, but it wasn’t up to the standards of the previous books. She went into an emotional and physical slump, and would die at age fifty-seven (four years after Max’s passing). I’ll close with an excerpt from a letter she wrote to her secretary while working on Sojourner: “I should not be in such anguish if Max were here. He could have told me long ago whether or not I’m on the right track, and there’s absolutely no one else I could allow to see unfinished work . . . There’s no one I trust for an honest answer as I trusted Max . . . I have lost all faith in my creative ability.” (Max and Marjorie is a collection of the correspondence between the two, and it includes nearly 700 letters, notes and wires.)

Over to Candleford – Flora Thompson

If you appreciated Lark Rise (as I did) and grew to like and care about Laura (as I did), you won’t find this sequel disappointing. Thompson does something akin to adjusting a telescope. In the first book we get a broad view; in this one she turns the knob and we get a closer look. Most significantly, Laura emerges as a more developed individual. But this is not an autobiography or a memoir. Thompson obviously had no desire to reveal intimate details about her family, and she only touches on her own feelings. We do get to know the mother much better, but the father stays in the background (though when he emerges he is kindly toward Laura). We learn more about life in the hamlet of Lark Rise, but gradually the locale shifts to Candleford. It’s a bustling market town where Laura has relatives with whom she stays for long periods of time. She meets and develops a friendship with the postmistress, who also owns and runs a blacksmith shop in the neighboring village of Candleford Green. When Laura reaches the age of thirteen (after her meager schooling ends) it’s time for her to get a job and leave home. Laura’s mother wants her to become a nursing assistant, but she recognizes that Laura as no inclination in that direction. And her needlework is so poor that she can’t be an apprentice to a dressmaker. What to do with Laura? At this point a propitious offer comes: the postmistress needs an assistant. So, in a final chapter entitled “Exit Laura,” she moves to Candleford Green. The virtues of this book are in the lovely writing and the acuteness of observation and perception. Thompson possessed a gift: when she describes a person they come alive, and the world she creates was made real to me. I look forward to the last instalment in the trilogy. *