A woman's story.

So much in this autobiographical novel was achingly familiar. Ernaux is a bit older than I am, but her mother was from the same generation as my own mother, who also came from a hard scrabble background and raised highly educated children. In a dispassionate, at times even detached, style, the author details her relationship with her mom against a background of daily routine. Her mother eventually comes to live with her and her family when she gets old and is suffering from Alzheimers.

Exquisitely and simply written, this is an objective and almost clinical examination of a mother daughter relationship through the recitation of everyday events in their lives together. Nevertheless, it manages to evoke great compassion, and documents the complexity that always exists between mothers and daughters.

"I shall never hear the sound of her voice again. It was her voice, together with her words, her hands, and her way of moving and laughing, which linked the woman I am to the child I once was. The last bond between me and the world I come from has been severed"

Ernaux has left just the best memorial to the memory of her mom.