Simple Passion by Annie Ernaux: book review
Simple Passion by Annie Ernaux The shock I had when I saw Goodreads classifies this as fiction. I'd read a bit of Exteriors for a class in an excerpt, and I considered Ernaux a nonfiction writer, a literary nonfiction writer. Not even really auto fiction because it feels like she liberally inserts herself factually into the narratives that are pulled unaltered from her life. This affair really happened... I'd gotten into this book hearing it talked about by one of my classmates so much that I got curious, and that was a great way to sink in. A slight idea that the prose would be good from my previous skim and then an effusive reverence for the writer as the only precursors. Usually, I'll give you a summary of the book before we get started, but I'm not sure how to do that here except to say this is a slim volume about her affair with the married man. Nothing in the summary speaks to what makes it compelling, though. So, instead, I'm going to give you two quotes I...