Publishers Weekly
French novelist and memoirist Ernaux (Shame; A Frozen Woman; etc.) was 23 in 1963 when she discovered she needed an abortion. After an unsuccessful attempt with a knitting needle, she tracked down a backstreet abortionist in Paris. Her three-month-old embryo was finally expelled some days later in the bathroom of her student dorm, the bloody remains flushed down the toilet. Ernaux tells the story of those awful months very simply, with only occasional asides of hindsight. A few well-chosen details "If I Had a Hammer" on the jukebox, the Singing Nun's "Dominique," the sexually predatory Movement men anchor her story in the early '60s, although most of the emotional texture (the body denial, panic, that feeling that "my ass had caught up with me") is disturbingly timeless. Ernaux's preoccupation with "power" over her "text" makes her postmodernism plain, although there's also a wonderfully old-fashioned Frenchness in her world view. Stretched out on the abortionist's table, she sees the scene before her like a still life: Formica table with enamel basis, probe, hairbrush. Ernaux needed to write this history: the making of a written record is the only reason she can find for this otherwise accidental pregnancy and its bloody aftermath. Indeed, readers who lived through the Bad Old Days before abortion was legalized will meet a lot of old demons here, even if a younger generation may find it bafflingly understated. Though not destined for a wide readership, it is an important, resonant work. (Oct.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
From the Publisher
With the dispassion and efficiency of a military strategist, [Ernaux] ambushes her past, prying it from its refuge in nostalgia and oblivion and holding it up naked for all to see . . . a harrowing account . . . superbly translated.” —Emily Eakin, The New York Times Book Review
“Ernaux. . .writes with clear, controlled precision that is as vivid as it is devastating to read, and which connects the pain and indignity of her experience to class, power and patriarchy.” —The Guardian
“Although the events Ernaux describes so explicitly occurred more than 50 years ago, they retain their horrifying immediacy, and should act as a reminder that her lack of options is the reality for many women worldwide, with access to legal abortion severely restricted or denied. Universal, primeval and courageous, Happening is a fiercely dislocating, profoundly relevant work—as much of art as of human experience. It should be compulsory reading.” —Financial Times
“Ernaux’s work is important. Not just because of her subject matter, but because of the way she hands it over: the subtle contradictions; her dispassionate stoicism, mixed with savagery; her detailed telling, mixed with spare, fragmented text. . . These are not things we vote for. These are not things we judge. These are things that happen. Are happening.” —Irish Times
“An important, resonant work.” —Publishers Weekly
“Happening is gripping and painfully inevitable to read—like a thriller. I felt close to Annie Duchesne, in her aloneness, in a way I’ve rarely felt close to a character in a book. Women will be grateful to Ernaux for her wisdom, concision, and commitment to writing about death and life.” —Daisy Hildyard, author of The Second Body
“Ernaux connects her experience to the wider world of class and religion and law, resulting in a startling, unusual portrait...” —The Village Voice
“…the book administers a punch beyond its slim size ... It is unflinching and honest, a frank patchwork of past and present experiences. … The title suits the subject: illegal abortion isn’t confined to history, suspended in aspic, a thing to be examined in the past tense. It is still hotly contested, demanding the present participle of Ernaux’s title. … an essential document of trauma which deserves to be widely read.” —Xenobe Purvis, Review 31
“This short book … is one of the most powerful memoirs I have ever read. Ernaux is famed in France, and is gathering fame abroad ... as an autobiographer of unusual talent and insight, virtually creating (although she disavows the term) a genre called “autofiction”, a hybrid style mixing, as the name suggests, autobiography and fiction, although there is nothing in Happening that suggests any fictional element. This is the truth, as bare as it can be told, although every so often Ernaux reminds us, carefully, that memory is slippery.” —Nicholas Lezard, Dhaka Tribune
“The writer’s ego is downplayed; there is no excavating of sensibility, it is more an exercise in the excavation of personal history, undertaken for the author’s own purposes. Her approach is investigative, almost academic, with the reader an accidental presence. The result for the reader is a feeling of intimate emotional, intellectual and sociological knowledge of the author’s pregnancy and abortion. The writing is sublime and unforgettable. Happening is one of the most remarkable books you will ever read.” —Dublin Review of Books
