Books from Bordeaux

Last September I attended a friend's wedding in the south of France. It was set in a beautiful villa about two hours from Bordeux.

That meant, that on the way back from the wedding I could spend a night in a city I have never been too, but heard quite a lot about.

I found myself wondering the rainy streets, drinking exquisite red wine, eating pasteries - the whole french clichè.

The day after, I was due to take a train from Bordeuax through Paris to Amsterdam - basically living the European dream. Beforehand, I had the morning to myself and I wondered into an English bookstore that knocked my socks off, Bardley's Bookshop.

There were too many books I wanted to get and not enough extra space in my luggage. I decided I'll get two and at the end settled on four, two of which were by french authors.

Now, it was never my plan to abstain from french authors but somehow it happened. So I found myself reading literature by two french women without even knowing that their works are somehow interrelated.

The first book was recommended to me by the shopkeeper and is somewhat more known - The Years by Annie Eranaux.

The Years was such a fascinating book, accuratley described as a "collective autobiography". Written (seemingly) half from the perspective of Ernaux and half from the perspective of the French society, the author really manages to capture the voice of a collective - it's aches, highes, turbalences; recounts of a society in change.

One such description, which left a big mark on me, comes early on in the book.

In this, Ernaux describes the post WW2 "high" of having gone through something bigger than ourselves, of having survived a life-shattering, dangerous event.

The recount painfully reminded me of my own society - of the relief in the face of "peace" but most of all in the way a shared distress and fear worringly brings people closer together. It made me reflect on the role war and conflict plays in strengthening the sense of belonging to a collective and enhancing nationalistic feelings, and how it can be instrumentalized by ruling forces. Reading a few paragraphs describing the French society post WW2 sent shivers down my spine.

Besides that, I found the feminist journey from the 1950' to the early 21st century insightful and touching, how Ernaux weaves her own experiences of abortion, problems with body image, relationships, motherhood, divorce and more, to the public and nation scale events and laws related to these seemingly personal issues.

Similarly, in the second book I bought, Parisian Triology by Colombe Schneck, Schneck draws us into her personal life throguh three semi-autobiographical stories - one about an abortion she had at the age of seventeen, one about a life-long friendship, and one about the rise and fall of a love affair.

Schneck recounts how Ernaux herself inspired her to write about her own abortion, after having thought for years, that the event had minor effects on her. She comes to terms with how life-changing the abortion was, how she felt about it then, and how she is altered by it to this very day.

However, the story that left the biggest mark on me was Friendship. The longest out of the three, the story recounts a friendship that starts during school days and ends at the end of life. It is an honest contemplation on the author's upbringing and background through a relationship that has witnessed it at all - at times making Colombe a better person, and at times revealing her worst parts. Through this recollection I thought about all the witnesses to our lives - the people that come and go, the ones that stay to view the many versions of ourselves in constant motion, the ones that are like mirrors to us, sometimes acutley painful.

All in all, I am happy I got to read these two books as a woman born in the 1995. Reading about the lives and struggles of women of two different generations gave me an opportunity to reflect on my life as a woman, my priviliges and difficulties, in this very day and age.

*** I read both books in English: The Years translated by Alison L. Strayer, and the Paris Trilogy translated by Lauren Elkin and Natasha Lehrer.