A woman’s story (une femme in French)
A woman’s story
Upon her mother’s death from Alzheimer’s, Ernaux embarks on a daunting journey back through time, as she seeks to “capture the real woman”. She explores the bond between mother and daughter. The book is a meditation on the way parents and children grow apart when exposed to different life experiences; in Ernaux’s case, it was her education and career that created the wedge between her and her uneducated mother. When her mother is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Ernaux does everything she can to make her mother’s last days comfortable and dignified, and in looking back through their often fraught relationship, searches for the woman her mother truly was before she began to lose essential parts of herself.
