Reading (Some of) Shawn's 5-Star Books: Annie Ernaux, Happening
Book #1: Happening, Annie Ernaux
(Cover image from goodreads: Happening by Annie Ernaux | Goodreads)
Unfortunately, although perhaps unsurprisingly, this memoir was not a 5-star read for me. That being said, I can understand why many people would rate this text 5 stars.
Let me
quickly provide some information about the text.
Annie
Ernaux’s memoir Happening was originally written in French and published
in 2000. It was translated into English by Tanya Leslie in 2001.
It is a very short—less than 100 pages—account of Ernaux’s pregnancy and abortion. Written in a journal-style, Ernaux communicates her
experiences. When she becomes pregnant, she’s only 23 years old.
Now, on to the plot and my feelings!
Ernaux
recounts her sexual encounter with a young man. She makes the decision not to
tell the young man that she’s pregnant and that she plans to have an abortion. I
admit that I feel a bit conflicted about the decision not to communicate the decision to abort with the male partner—not always—but in some situations. Anyway, abortion is a difficult and
controversial topic, which is why I was curious about Ernaux’s work.
I don’t
want to say I’m fascinated with the topic of abortion, but it is an issue that
I’m okay to speak about because it’s complex and still considered a taboo. Also, as
someone who has been told by doctors and surgeons not to get pregnant and have children (due to a
childhood illness, carrying a child and giving birth would be too risky for me), I’ve always known that if I conceive, I don’t really have a choice about what to do. It does
help that I don’t want children and am childless. But I digress.
What I
found compelling about Ernaux’s experiences was that she had no desire to be
pregnant and didn’t feel any maternal conviction or prescribe to the nonsense
about pregnancy that women are supposed to. My favourite line is, “On the
doorstep [the gynaecologist] beamed at me, ‘love children are the most
beautiful of all.’ What a terrible statement. I walked back to my halls of residence. In my journal I wrote: ‘I am pregnant.
What a nightmare’” (p16). I appreciate that Ernaux was open and honest enough
to recount her feelings in the moments she felt them. Sure, maybe Ernaux’s
sentiments changed. I assume they did because she has two children with her
ex-husband, Phillip Ernaux (divorced in 1980). But to write something that
would have been so against the grain at the time gave me a sense of relief,
because she was emboldened enough to write it.
This book
is also quite forward for its time. When Ernaux became pregnant in 1963,
abortion was illegal in France, and it’s interesting that Ernaux actually
includes some of the legal jargon about abortion in her journal: “The following
persons shall be liable to both a fine and term of imprisonment: […] 4) those
guilty of instigating abortion and spreading propaganda advocating
contraception. […] – Nouveau Larousse
Universel, 1948 edition”
(p21).
I don't like a lot of Canada's laws (especially those related to Indigenous groups and since a certain PM recently invoked the Emergencies Act), so I found this quote in Ernaux’s memoir to be one of the most compelling: “As was often the case, you couldn’t tell whether abortion was banned because it was wrong or wrong because it was banned. People judged according to the law, they didn’t judge the law” (p31).
When the law dictates how to control people's bodies, I think that people need to question why this control is allowed. As I was reading this text, I had to acknowledge that I've had a pregnancy scare or two
and felt the not knowing and subsequent waiting weighing me down. This not
knowing didn’t cause me pain, but I felt compassion for Ernaux when she described her
inability to move forward, as an academic and writer, in any tangible way: “In
a strange way, my inability to write my thesis was far more alarming than my
need to abort. It was the unmistakable sign of my silent downfall. (My journal
read: ‘I can’t write. I can’t work. Is there any way out of this mess?’) I had
stopped being ‘an intellectual’ […] It causes indescribable pain” (p33).
As she recounts her pain, I noted that this isn't the only time I felt for Ernaux. But interestingly there are other moments when I thought that she wasn’t
taking the situation seriously, but then I remembered that she was 23 years
old. What did I know at 23? And what would I have done? Because there are times
that Ernaux’s journal captures exactly what I think a 23-year-old
person would do and say: avoidance, flippancy, fear, distraction, etc…
I can understand why
this wasn’t a 5-star read for me: it’s a memoir (these are almost never 5
stars), and it’s actually, if you can believe that I’m saying this, too short.
I wish that it wasn’t written as a journal but instead that the narrative
flowed a bit more seamlessly instead of being written in short, choppy
paragraphs. Lastly, Ernaux’s writing, at least in this text, isn’t lyrical or
prosaic. It’s very matter-of-fact. There’s nothing wrong with this style, and
in fact, it suits the subject matter. But it’s not something that I tend to
enjoy reading.
Although Happening wasn’t a 5-star read for me, I admired Ernaux's openness, honesty, and willingness to share a difficult situation in her life with the world. I’m thankful that she was able to put out into the world feelings that are similar to my own and appreciated that this was not overly sentimental. I think that sharing this as a nonfiction text is important, especially when we consider how contentious this subject is.
Finally, this short work packs a punch. So, if you’re not a fan of short
fiction, vignettes, or short paragraph writing, memoirs, the subject
matter (abortion), and some descriptive detail about the abortion itself, then
this may not be for you.
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