His greatest satisfaction, possibly even the raison d’être of his existence, was the fact that I belonged to the world which had scorned him. I realize now that anything to do with language was a source of resentment and distress, far more than money." I finished this novel in August but I was very very busy and had no time to write a proper review. Now, I feel it is too late so I will only say a few words. When I read Proust or Mauriac, I don't think they evoke the time when my father was a child. Its setting is the Middle Ages.” A small gem of a work, and I deeply appreciate the work of Ernaux being so crisp, small in size but high in impact. You can loose yourself for a few hours in her books and have food for thought for many, many days.

A Man’s Place | novel by Ernaux | Britannica

It’s taking me a long time to write. By choosing to expose the web of his life through a number of selected facts and details, I feel that I am gradually moving away from the figure of my father. The skeleton of the book takes over and ideas seem to develop of their own accord. If on the other hand I indulge in personal reminiscence, I remember him as he was, with his way of laughing and walking, taking me by the hand to the funfair. . . annie ernaux’nun ergenliğinde babasıyla arasındaki çatlışma, babasından utanması, anlaşamaması, sonrasında burjuva kocasıyla yaşadığı yabancılık… bunlar da var üstelik. Il posto è lo spazio invisibile che separa gli esseri umani, quella distanza che va a crearsi tra le vite delle persone e che la letteratura può cercare di descrivere, senza poter colmare.

An affecting portrait of a man whose own peasant upbringing typified the adage that a child should never be better educated than his parents.’ A lesser writer would turn these experiences into misery memoirs, but Ernaux does not ask for our pity – or our admiration. It’s clear from the start that she doesn’t much care whether we like her or not, because she has no interest in herself as an individual entity. She is an emblematic daughter of emblematic French parents, part of an inevitable historical process, which includes breaking away. Her interest is in examining the breakage …Ernaux is the betrayer and her father the betrayed: this is the narrative undertow that makes A Man's Place so lacerating.’ Annie Ernaux’s father died exactly two months after she passed her exams for a teaching certificate. Barely educated and valued since childhood strictly for his labour, Ernaux’s father had grown into a hard, practical man who showed his family little affection. Narrating his slow ascent towards material comfort, Ernaux’s cold observation in A Man’s Placereveals the shame thathaunted her father throughout his life. She scrutinizesthe importance he attributed to manners and languagethat came so unnaturally to him as he struggled toprovide for his family with a grocery store and caféin rural France. Over the course of the book, Ernauxgrows up to become the uncompromising observernow familiar to the world, while her father matures intoold age with a staid appreciation for life as it is and fora daughter he cautiously, even reluctantly admires. The core of this short book (and most of her books are short, part of a larger memoir project) is of course about her father, begun at the occasion of his death. It is also about a time and a place, mid twentieth century France. Ernaux writes of her struggle to move out of the working-class life in which she was raised to the middle class--university, teaching primary school, marrying “well” into her husband’s middle class family, becoming an academic and a writer. Her father’s pride and sense of loss about her moving out and “up” was mirrored by her own pride and sense of loss. Note: In my notes at one point in the book early on I made this comment, ‘can’t believe what I’m reading...’. I was reading about the father’s childhood:

A Man’s Place by Annie Ernaux | Fitzcarraldo Editions

bizde sınıfsal farklar hiç bu denli yoğun olmadığı, osmanlı saray çevresini dışarda bırakırsak, çoğumuz reaya köylüler olduğumuz için şanslıyız belki de. belki de değiliz çünkü fransız edebiyatını en çok besleyen konu bu. şu an kararsız kaldım. Un romanzo che segue la vita di un padre, il padre della narratrice, un operaio diventato commerciante, iniziando dalla sua scomparsa e andando a ritroso, per poi ricongiungersi, di nuovo, con l'inizio. Terminei de pôr em dia a herança que tive de depositar na soleira do mundo burguês e culto quando nele entrei.»

A Man’s Place

The Academy praised “her for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory.”

Annie Ernaux: A Man’s Place review – an intimate portrait Annie Ernaux: A Man’s Place review – an intimate portrait

When we get to the end of the book, we still do not feel like we fully know the man whose life it depicts. A Man’s Place marks its own reliance on absence by refusing to satisfy. Neither does it tell us much about Ernaux’s own life, despite the elements of autobiography. The years comprising her teacher training, her university degree and her marriage are blurred. Any emotional response to her father’s death – or even to his life – is largely absent. It is difficult to write about our loved ones after their death during the time of grief as we will have to relive our memories which will make us happy and sad at the same time. They were convinced that being well-read and well-mannered were marks of an inner excellence that was innate. I thought to myself: 'One day I shall have to explain all this.' What I meant was, to write about my father, his life and the distance which had come between us during my adolescence. Although it had something to do with class, it was different, indefinable. Like fractured love."pg 13 - This neutral way of writing comes to me naturally. It was the same style I used when I wrote home telling my parents the latest news. The first half of the book has a downright naturalistic slant: the hard work, the austerity of life, the impossibility to enjoy. Ernaux describes it all in a very clinically distant way, and in the second half portrays her own rebellion against the life and worldview of her parents. Between the lines you occasionally notice some self-doubt, namely whether she has not betrayed her own environment by her entry into the world of bourgeoisie; and perhaps that's the reason why she wrote this book: “Je hasarde une explication: écrire c'est le dernier recours quand on a trahi.” In that sense, this harsh book may be a form of therapeutic writing. I liked it, thought it felt quite familiar to me, almost as if I had written it myself about my own father, who was born in 1913 and died at the age of 76, close to twenty years ago, on the operating table, in heart by-pass surgery. That was the single worst moment of my life, having the surgeon report to us the news. I thought my own heart would literally burst from grief as I heard from the surgeon this news. I was close to him, in a non-verbal way. I was the fifth of six children, loved him very much, though I was quietly somewhat ashamed he was so much older than my friends' fathers, and uneducated as I myself went to school.

A Mans Place HOME | A Mans Place

Ernaux’s parents met at the rope factory. Then her father worked as a roofer. When he fell from a rafter, her parents looked for a business they could manage, one that didn’t require a lot of start-up money. They bought a grocery store. Because they had to grant credit, they struggled financially. Her father had to get a second job while her mother ran the business. This book goes by two names, ‘A Man’s Place (Four Walls Eight Windows. 1992 and then later editions) and “Positions” (Quartet Books, 1991). I have no idea why. 😐 French author, Annie Ernaux, showed up on my bookish radar when she won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2022.Her father is focussed on appearing in good standing to the community, making a success of his small grocery shop. One can already soon imagine how this leads to a divide between him and his daughter. I felt the portrayal, while being factual, to be emotional. As a reader you feel the distance between generations, how people are shaped by their upbringing and can't transcend these bounds even with those theoretically closest to them. At times I recognise the same with my father, who almost always ask me if I still have a job, himself having grown up in the eighties with hundreds of rejection letters, while I completely feel different about the subject.