Taking the form of random journal entries over the course of seven years, Exteriors concentrates on the ephemeral encounters that take place just on the periphery of a person's lived environment. Ernaux captures the feeling of contemporary living on the outskirts of Paris: poignantly lyrical, chaotic, and strangely alive. Exteriors is in many ways the most ecstatic of Ernaux's books - the first in which she appears largely free of the haunting personal relationships she has written about so powerfully elsewhere, and the first in which she is able to leave the past behind her.
‘I find her work extraordinary.’
— Eimear McBride, author of Strange Hotel
‘Admirable for its quiet grace as well as its audacity in a willingness to note (and thus make noteworthy) the smallest parts of life. It’s a masterclass in understatement, a quality difficult to find nowadays, in literature or life.’
— Lucy Sweeney-Byrne, Irish Times
‘Ernaux, in particular, feels unparalleled in its harnessing of memories. An acclaimed writer in her native country, her descriptions of human life are concise and they mediate our own opinions on these encounters with our own prejudices of the world.’
— Billie Ingram Sofokleous, Buzz Magazine
‘Reading her is like getting to know a friend, the way they tell you about themselves over long conversations that sometimes take years, revealing things slowly, looping back to some parts of their life over and over’
— Joanna Biggs, London Review of Books
‘The book is at once lyrical and unruly. It’s a story of fleeting encounters, overheard conversations and clear-sighted observations that will make you pay attention to the seemingly ephemeral details of ordinary life.’
— Monocle
Praise for Simple Passion
‘The triumph of Ernaux’s approach ... is to cherish commonplace emotions while elevating the banal expression of them.... A monument to passions that defy simple explanations.’
— New York Times
‘A work of lyrical precision and diamond-hard clarity.’
— New Yorker
‘All this – the suffering and anxiety of waiting, the brief soulagement of lovemaking, the lethargy and fatigue that follow, the renewal of desire, the little indignities and abjections of both obsession and abandonment – Ernaux tells with calm, almost tranquillized matter-of-factness [that] feels like determination, truth to self, clarity of purpose.’
— Washington Post
‘I devoured – not once, but twice – Fitzcarraldo’s new English edition of Simple Passion, in which the great Annie Ernaux describes the suspended animation of a love affair with a man who is not free. Every paragraph, every word, brought me closer to a state of purest yearning.’
— Rachel Cooke, Observer
‘What mesmerizes here, as elsewhere in Ernaux’s oeuvre, is the interplay between the solipsistic intensity of the material and its documentary, disinterested, almost egoless presentation. Reminiscent of the poet Denise Riley’s Time Lived, Without its Flow, a study of how grief mangles chronology, Simple Passion is a riveting investigation, in a less tragic key, into what happens to one’s experience of time in the throes of romantic obsession.’
— Lola Seaton, New Statesman
0 有用 理想小说家 2023-02-14 20:18:14 重庆
有一些喜欢用“我”写作的作家到一个时期总会厌烦这点,尝试着用别的人称,尝试着逃离自己。但安妮·埃尔诺没有,反而为自己找到了立足点。她把羞耻从作者转到读者身上,让读者因为第一人称单数失去反应时间,直接代入感受。这样的写作方式一定受过不少质疑,加上女性的身份更是如此,但她已经做出了最好的反击。她的前言写得很感人:尝试用最客观的视角和写法记录下外部世界,尽量不让自己的感情渗入客观的存在。她是感受深沉、情... 有一些喜欢用“我”写作的作家到一个时期总会厌烦这点,尝试着用别的人称,尝试着逃离自己。但安妮·埃尔诺没有,反而为自己找到了立足点。她把羞耻从作者转到读者身上,让读者因为第一人称单数失去反应时间,直接代入感受。这样的写作方式一定受过不少质疑,加上女性的身份更是如此,但她已经做出了最好的反击。她的前言写得很感人:尝试用最客观的视角和写法记录下外部世界,尽量不让自己的感情渗入客观的存在。她是感受深沉、情感充沛的女人,使用最紧密熟悉的人称,字里行间却仍旧保持着无私的理性。我相信,这样的写作只有女性能够做到。 (展开)
0 有用 敲电报的秋秋 2023-02-13 05:33:25 德国
蛮喜欢这种碎片化的故事,对生活的细微观察。曾经在巴黎短暂的居住过一年,对书中的一些细节都深有体会。
0 有用 lieerli 2023-10-06 05:42:13 卡塔尔
日常生活的闲笔 记录对他人的观察和自己的念头,超市店员 车上乘客 各种路人…读来轻松。里面写了她看到一个母亲让女儿自己做事说I won’t always be here让她想起自己父母也说过一样的话 我想说真是古今中外一模一样阿
0 有用 查怜花 2022-12-10 01:10:19 英国
喜欢喜欢喜欢
0 有用 胡文塔多 2023-12-12 12:05:40 上海
Dizzying. Life seems to me but a succession of happenings interspersed with evocations of Ernaux’s words.
0 有用 三线奇拉子 2024-04-28 20:30:54 荷兰
Annie Ernaux简直是法国村上春树,怎么什么都能出版……这本日记才74页😂(虽然觉得比村上日记言之有物一点的……
0 有用 胡文塔多 2023-12-12 12:05:40 上海
Dizzying. Life seems to me but a succession of happenings interspersed with evocations of Ernaux’s words.
1 有用 朗韵 2023-10-17 01:17:15 广东
这可能是我一直都在期待的一种题材,或者说写法。一种难以归类的文体,与其说是小说毋宁说是随笔或者散记。开头第一段即被击中,一种闲笔了了就切中要害的爽快感是不可多得的阅读体验。全书所有的行文深刻演绎了人与人之间和人与环境之间的间离感/疏离感与亲密感的互融。叙事煽情容易,但精准传达感受极难,必须是一流的天赋才可以做到。第一人称的手法确实妙不可言,有神出鬼没之感。AE的书大概是那种你用一天时间可以读完,但... 这可能是我一直都在期待的一种题材,或者说写法。一种难以归类的文体,与其说是小说毋宁说是随笔或者散记。开头第一段即被击中,一种闲笔了了就切中要害的爽快感是不可多得的阅读体验。全书所有的行文深刻演绎了人与人之间和人与环境之间的间离感/疏离感与亲密感的互融。叙事煽情容易,但精准传达感受极难,必须是一流的天赋才可以做到。第一人称的手法确实妙不可言,有神出鬼没之感。AE的书大概是那种你用一天时间可以读完,但是需要一生时间回味的类型。 (展开)
0 有用 lieerli 2023-10-06 05:42:13 卡塔尔
日常生活的闲笔 记录对他人的观察和自己的念头,超市店员 车上乘客 各种路人…读来轻松。里面写了她看到一个母亲让女儿自己做事说I won’t always be here让她想起自己父母也说过一样的话 我想说真是古今中外一模一样阿
0 有用 re 2023-08-08 17:31:28 澳大利亚
“I tell myself that writing is this for me.”