The years, my dear friend, they pass so quickly. I'm so excited to tell you all about this amazing book by the incredible French author Annie Ernaux, who was awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature! It's no surprise that Annie Ernaux is now a Nobel Prize in Literature winner – she's absolutely brilliant! The wonderful 82-year-old Ernaux has long been a first-class writer in France and even in Europe. She is often mentioned alongside world-class writers such as Woolf and Duras, and has always been a favourite in Nobel Prize predictions.

So, what makes Ernaux's writing so special? How is it that she can stand out from all the other outstanding writers and win the favour of the Nobel Prize? The judges were full of praise for her, saying she has "courage and keen insight into the roots, divisions and collective limitations of personal memory, and for consistently examining in her writing, from different perspectives, the vastly differentiated lives that exist in terms of gender, language and class." From this review, we can summarise two key words about Annie Ernaux: the very small individual, the very large collective. She shows us how the everyday details of her own life reflect the wider social context, and how our individual memories fit into the collective memory of our generation.

The Long Years is made up of 14 little snippets of Ernaux's life, each one about five years apart. Elnor picked 14 photos of himself from an old photo album. They show all the big moments, how he was feeling inside, and what was going on in the world at the time. Ernaux's masterpiece, The Years, is a wonderful example of her classic style. It might not have an exciting plot or wonderful characters, but it has a long aftertaste that will stay with you. As readers, we experience the full range of emotions that come with living a life in the flow of time. We feel the highs and lows, the joys and sorrows, of a life lived in the river of years. As the years pass, memories fade, but the sentimentality remains.

I'd love to read this book to you, if you'd like. I'll read it in three parts. In the first part, we'll take a look at Ernaux's life experience and see how she started out on her literary journey. In the second part, we'll dive into the unique literary techniques she used in The Years. And in the third part, we'll explore how her work has had a big impact on literature and the French society she lived in.

All right, let's dive in!

Part I

If you want to read Ernaux's wonderful literary works, it's really important to understand her life experience. It might seem like her novels are all about one particular experience in her own life, which could make it seem like there's not much variety. It might seem like a very narrow range of subjects, and even a little boring. But there's so much we can learn from a person whose life consists mostly of mundane experiences! I wonder if Ernaux's life was full of interesting and strange encounters?

Well, not really, bless her. The lovely Elnor was born in a small village in Normandy, France, in 1940, during a German bombing raid. Elnor's parents are local farmers who didn't have the chance to go to school. After finishing elementary school, they left to work hard to support themselves and their family. They started a grocery store in the village, which was their way of making a living. Erno's childhood memories are of the cosy, bustling counter, a room so full of love that the family couldn't sit down to eat at the same time, and the vast, open fields outside the grocery store. The highlight of Erno's life was going to church on Sundays.

In the difficult years after World War II, her parents were really hoping for a better life for their little girl, Erna. They sent her to the best parochial school in the area, even though it was very expensive. Here, sweet little Ernaud encounters the common class differences in French society, which cause her sensitive heart a bit of pain at an early age. She was surprised to find that the French spoken at school was much more refined and sophisticated than the language her parents used at home. The teachers spoke softly, while her parents only shouted in the vernacular. In math class, the teacher was so kind and patient, always making sure little Ernaud understood. She would give examples like this, "If your mother sold ten packs of coffee today, how much money did she receive?" It was a scene from Elno's life she knew well, and her classmates were looking at her with open admiration. It made Erno realise that the grocery store owner's daughter and the lawyer's daughter lived in two totally different worlds. It was really tough for her to play with the other kids, and more often than not, she was stuck reading books. During this time, Elnor fell in love with literary classics like Jane Eyre and Gone with the Wind. She was inspired by the strong and independent heroines in the books and dreamed of becoming just like them!

It's so sad that French society at the time was very restrictive for women. They had fewer opportunities and it was really hard for them to get an education or a job. Even the middle-class girls from better-off families, who were the envy of Ernaud, were mostly only able to finish high school. After that, they got married and had children, which was a great choice for them, but it meant there were no further possibilities in life. Elnor was a clever little thing, and that was the only thing that set him apart from the other kids. With the help of a yearly scholarship and the money she earned as a nanny, she made her way out of the countryside. She then went on to get an advanced degree in literature at university and became a secondary school teacher. In France, teaching at secondary school was a really respected job in the cultural world. Lots of famous intellectuals, like the existentialist philosophers Sartre and Beauvoir, had experience as secondary school teachers! Up until this time, though, literature, especially the highbrow stuff and art, had never really been part of Ernaux's life.

Ernaud tried to get his novel published when he was at college, but the publisher said it was too ordinary and only housewives would be interested. On top of all that, there was another reason why Ernaux's novels didn't get the recognition they deserved. It was because she was a bit different from the other writers of her time. This was the 1960s, a time of great change and excitement in French culture. Ernaux's friends, like her, were highly educated and eager to make their mark on the cultural scene. They loved discussing philosophy and music in Parisian salons. Ernaux, however, was not able to join them. With so much going on in her life – rent, work, and a surprise pregnancy – she didn't have much time for literature and art. Life was just too hectic!

It wasn't until she was thirty that Ernaux began to write consistently. For most writers, that would have been too late! By this time, Ernaux was a mum of two and had to fit in writing on top of her full-time job and household chores! Her first book was an autobiographical novel called The Empty Closet. It was a really moving account of her own teenage years. She grew up in a poor, isolated area and went to a posh school where she felt out of her depth. It was a very personal and powerful book. Once she'd finished The Empty Closet, this autobiographical writing became Ernaux's personal style. It wasn't until 1983, when her third novel, A Man's Place, was published, that she was finally recognised by the literary world. By that time, Ernaux was 43 years old.

Once she became famous, Elnor sadly said that she was at the "double bottom" of the gender and class dimensions. This made her writing journey a bit slow and winding. But everyday life hasn't stopped Ernaux being a talented writer! Literature has the power to turn mediocrity into magic and dross into wine. In Ernaux's work, we can read about many objects that might not seem like they'd make great literature at first glance. She writes about the everyday troubles of rent, depicts the hustle and bustle of the subway and supermarkets, but in these moments, Ernaux unearths themes that are at the heart of serious literature: time, memory and forgetfulness, the fragility of emotions and the complexity of history. Ernaux is closer to real life than the intellectuals who have long been immersed in the Parisian cultural scene. She puts the power of that reality into her work, which is really inspiring! In the second part that follows, we'll explore how Ernaux magically transforms the ordinary fragments of life into literary gold.

Part Two!

A novelist's vocation, Elnor once said with a twinkle in her eye, is to tell the truth. There are so many ways to tell the facts! In fact, I'd even go as far as saying that how the facts are told is the most important distinction between the various genres and styles of literature. A realist writer will show us the typical significance of the facts, a romantic will capture the emotional component of the facts, and a postmodern writer may even question whether the facts themselves exist! Elnor is a bit of a tricky one to pin down. Her writing style is simple and introspective, yet backward-looking. Sometimes it's less like literature and more like non-fiction or sociological observation.

Ernaux's novels are often about her own and her loved ones' real-life experiences. She has written about her parents' difficult life, her own youth, marriage and ageing, and even what she saw when she was shopping for groceries every day! But there's more to Ernaux's writing than meets the eye. The quarrels between parents, the abortions of young girls, the uninteresting rules and regulations of schools, and even the daily fluctuations of commodity prices are more than just boring streams of information. If you dig down into them, you'll find the pulse of society and history. For instance, Ernaux once gave us a wonderful, detailed account of the rules of etiquette in his childhood parochial school. He told us about how the students had to stand up when the principal entered the room and how they had to wear a skirt over their trouser coat. These rules show us that etiquette was a really important way of keeping social classes in line in France at that time.

The Long Years is a wonderful, unique novel that doesn't read like a traditional book. It's based on Ernaux's life, from his birth in the 1940s to 2006. However, it's not a straightforward, step-by-step account of his life. Instead, it's a really thoughtful and detailed portrayal of a single photograph. The whole book is split into fifteen sections, each one starting with a description of a photo taken by Ernaux and ending with a family dinner. It's so interesting to see how the people in the photos change over time. They go from little girls to adults to even older people. And the photos themselves seem random and accidental, but they really capture moments in people's lives. They remind me of a different era. Ernaux's childhood in post-war Europe was a time of great vitality, despite the poverty. Her youth was a turbulent, vibrant time, full of change. In her middle age, the middle-class world was stable but uninteresting. In her old age, the dreams of the intellectuals of her generation to reform society were sadly dashed. People's lives were filled with consumer goods, and people became numb in their comfort.

Erno's experience is not just his own, but belongs to an entire generation. Elnor was really good at close-ups. She would move the lens of her writing closer to things like a wooden horse in a photograph, a fuzzy knit sweater, or the date the photo was taken. This helped her to share her memories in a really interesting way. These memories are full of all the things we loved as kids: books, adverts, jingles, slogans, songs and news that remind us of times shared with our friends. For instance, in her book she talks about all the things people chatted about at a vacation dinner party: food colouring and hormones, painless childbirth, homeopathy, action blockbusters, the fact that scrubbing the sink with ayahuasca is toxic, the benefits of practising yoga, group psychotherapy, and so on. It's a lovely little snapshot of her life on an evening in the summer of 1973, and a fascinating glimpse into the society of the period. As people began to move on from the social movements of the 1960s and the wars that were taking place in the colonies, and as the young middle class wanted to live in a gentler, more comfortable way, there was a growing concern about health, food safety, and pollution. And as recalled five years earlier, the topics of discussion at the party were still violence, racism, and the wars that took place in the colonies. It's so interesting to see how things change over time! Ernaux doesn't directly judge this change in social mores. She just nods to it, leaving the reader to experience it for themselves.

This kind of close-up really has an impact; it allows the facts to speak for themselves. For instance, in The Years, when Ernaux talks about her own divorce, she doesn't go into detail about how her emotions broke down and how she and her husband went from being madly in love to strangers. Instead, she just makes a list: "Carpet 300 francs, hi-fi combo stereo 1,000 francs, glass fish tank 1,000 francs, Moroccan mirror 200 francs, bed 2,000 francs... Oh my, that was quite a bill!" This list was a kind of final reckoning for the couple, a way of valuing all the lovely household goods they had enjoyed together for years and then dividing the cost equally. All those feelings, how intense the love-hate had once been, had completely dissipated, leaving only the cold division of property. This coldness has in turn eroded the vivid memories of the past, and this is the real "emotional breakdown". But Ernaux simply lists the cool facts, which are worth a thousand words!

Ernaux came up with a really interesting technique called the "autobiography without a name". I know it sounds a little strange, but I think "unclaimed autobiography" is a great title! It's a bit of a puzzle, though, because if it's an autobiography, how can it be "unclaimed"? Isn't it incredible? There's not a single instance of "I" in The Years. It's always "we," "we," or the feminine "she" or "she." It's either "we" or "she" in the feminine gender, and "people, somebody" in the generic sense. For instance, when Elnor talks about her memories of World War II, even though it was all her own experience, she says, "There's so much I want to say about the winter of 1942. The cold, the hunger, the bulbous kale, the r It's so sad to read about all those bombings and cigarette stamps, and the bombing that marked the start of the war in the north. It's heartbreaking to read about the 'rout' when the main roads were filled with bicycles and two-wheelers, and all the stores that were looted. It's so sad to read about the victims searching through the rubble for their pictures and money. You see, there's not a single word "I" in the whole book! I'd love to know why it's written like that! Ernaux says that the first-person narrative can make the world seem a bit too narrow if you only focus on your own point of view. An unpersonal narrative is a great way for the narrator to step back from the world and let the author stay out of it. This helps to keep the focus on the story and gives the reader more space to think.

In Western literature since the 20th century, there's been a common trend to focus less on the plot and characters. This is also the case with The Years. This makes the subject of the work more relatable and in line with reality. It's so interesting how literary scholars have noticed that although classical literature is absolutely gorgeous, it is actually quite far away from the everyday lives and emotions of ordinary people. It's also perhaps a little ungrounded. At the same time, it was tricky to show the more complex psychological experiences of modern people using classical techniques. So, to solve this problem, Western literature started to say that the fact or experience itself is the most important and deserves respect. It also said that artistic techniques and even subjective emotions have no right to compromise the fact itself. The Years is not your typical autobiography. It's not about introducing the biographer and then moving on. Instead, it's a deeply personal journey that stays with you long after you've finished reading. Ernaux is a writer, and that's the most basic fact about her. But it's also so much more than that. On the other hand, you get to read about how Ernaux spent an ordinary day, which is really quite fascinating! This type of writing isn't a new thing in literature. There's even a book by an Irish author called Ulysses by Joyce. It's one of the best books of the 20th century! It's a million words long, but it only describes a day in the life of three ordinary people in Dublin.

Another great thing about the 'autobiography of no one' is that when the 'I' is taken away from the autobiography, even the most intimate and personal experiences don't belong to the author alone. They echo society and history as a whole, which is really interesting! I think Elnor uses "she" to refer to herself in the photographs because she has a kind of detached relationship with the people in them. For instance, she describes herself in 1963 as follows: "There's no connection between her life and history, but the marks of history have been left by the chilly feeling of March and the gloomy weather." I'd love to know what Ernaux is referring to when she talks about the 'traces of history'. Oh, the weather was so wet, there were student dances, and she was pregnant! Not to mention the Cuban Crisis, the Kennedy assassination, and the death of the Pope. For those who lived through this history, it all happened at the same time. It's so interesting how the big events were intertwined with their own experiences! When we think back to those times, it's not just dry news anymore. It's a vivid memory, full of emotion. It's amazing how remembering the names of historical figures can bring back memories of people who lived through the same era as us! And it's so interesting how many of our private lives are actually shaped by the events of history! In each section, Elnor writes about her own sexuality and gender awareness. These were topics that were strictly forbidden in school at the time and that teenage girls could only talk about in fearful secrecy until the 1970s, when the boldest girls started family planning. Ernaud talks about her unwanted pregnancy, how she came close to losing her life because of the conservative climate in France at the time, which meant she couldn't get an abortion, and how her studies were suddenly suspended, even though she'd worked so hard to get them going. These painful, private experiences are not just narcissistic and sickly, but are a vivid, authentic footnote to social history at large.

Part Three

I hope you enjoyed learning about Ernaux's unique writing technique as exemplified by the book The Years. I'd love to chat with you about where the strong impact of Ernaux's work comes from.

It's also worth mentioning that the French media didn't exactly celebrate Ernaux's Nobel Prize for Literature. It's so interesting to see how things like this play out in different countries. In France, literature is really important, and readers there have always fought fiercely over it. With Ernaux, though, it's not just about literature. There are all these other controversies going on. The conservative media in France said that Ernaux's writing was a bit rough around the edges and that she didn't have the same level of literary talent as some of the other writers they liked. They also said that she was just riding the political wave because she was really focused on social issues. Hernández was also a big hit with her many fans, who saw her win as a victory for "provincials, women, and commoners." This controversy shows us one thing, at least. Ernaux, who is known for writing about her personal experiences, is really involved in reality. She really succeeds in writing about tiny individuals who are connected to a larger society. It's so interesting how different groups of people in society have reacted so strongly to her work!

Ernaux's work is really quite sharp! She uncovers some harsh truths that have been hidden by a life of affluence. It's so sad to see how strong social prejudice is in France. It's not just about working hard to rise up the hierarchy. Ordinary people have to betray everything they own and lose their own language. It's a price the successful will forget from time to time, and a pain the losers just can't afford. In her book The Years, she doesn't glorify her rise to the top or take pride in her change of fate. Instead, she calls herself a "defector," which means she's someone who has betrayed herself. Hernández has done a great job of studying sociology, especially the cultural sociology of the brilliant French sociologist Bourdieu. Bourdieu shows us how French society divides people into different groups based on their culture. For example, people can become middle class by getting an education and taking exams. This was a great success in terms of how it affected people individually, but not so much in a socio-cultural sense. French class society found a way to stick together through culture. Manners were for the middle and upper classes, while everything at the bottom, from the way they spoke to their eating habits, was seen as different. It's so sad - the rules of the game forced the descendants of the French commoners to abandon their identity, to be ashamed of their fathers, and to try to be recognised by the upper classes. As someone who had the courage to leave behind the life she had always known, Hernandez was able to show us all the ways in which she herself had fallen short. She makes a great point, too. It's the folks at the bottom who are most subject to this set of rules. Hernández's father is a little embarrassed of his own vernacular and wants the whole family, especially young Hernández, who is a student, to speak standard French. However, if someone points out a linguistic error to him, he gets really upset and insists that he hasn't made a mistake. When Ernaud invites his middle-class boyfriend over, his father nervously imitates middle-class hospitality. But in reality, middle-class France has long since outgrown that kind of formal etiquette.

Ernaud also takes a moment to reflect on herself. Having made the big move away from home, she realises that the new middle-class language she has picked up is just as full of prejudice, ignorance and even vulgarity as the vernacular of the countryside. Each section of The Years ends with a family dinner, a gathering of intellectuals who are just like their country relatives! They compete over the superiority of cutlery and ingredients and talk about fashionable but tedious topics. One is often left smiling and bored, but it's all in good fun! If we read between the lines, we can see that Ernaux has a lot of doubts about herself. She has a Parisian home, a high-end stereo, and a decent job, but she still feels unsure about herself. She had been a bit ashamed of her origins, but now, she's ready to move on from that and embrace her culture and memories.

And so, right at the start of her next book, she quotes, "When people betray, writing becomes the only form of recourse." Writing was Elnor's way of sorting herself out, and it also helped her to understand the underclass of people she had neglected and undermined. Ernaux shows us her father's hard work and struggles to make a better life for himself. She also reveals her own sadness and guilt about his situation. She says that her father "may never understand why I want to study literature." Elnor's father would have been pretty upset if he'd known that Elnor was doing so well at school. After all, she was learning a language that not many people could understand. Elno can't help but wonder how her father would have felt if he'd known she was writing about him in a book of serious literature. Writing is like a scalpel that cuts open the vanity, embarrassment, jealousy and shame of the "defectors", and also the social curtain that creates the "defectors". It's a way of peeling back the layers to see what's really going on. The real "black history" doesn't belong to Ernaud or her parents, but to the whole of France.

The wonderful thing about good literature is that it can move our hearts in so many different ways. To really move someone's heart, it's got to speak to them in a way that they can really relate to. Modern literature shows us that the best adventures are not in ancient palaces, but in our everyday lives. And the most memorable heroes are not dragon slayers, but ordinary people and their ordinary memories. It's so sad that people who have lived through these things feel like they have nothing to say. They think they're too ordinary to be worth mentioning. It's such a shame. Ernaux's "Autobiography of a Nobody" is so much more than just a technical skill in words. It's also her attitude towards reality, and it's a beautiful one. When Ernaux looks honestly at her own life, she's really looking at the lives of millions of people and helping them to find their dignity again.

In the preface of the book, Ernaux wrote a special preface for Chinese readers, explaining her writing to complete strangers. She said, "I hope you feel that we are in fact in the same world, and that time is also passing relentlessly." We may not get to experience Ernaux's life first-hand, but we can still benefit from her experience and her writing. It's so inspiring to see how she connects distant, faraway places and people to our own world, reminding us that we're all part of the same global community, connected by our shared humanity.

So, that's a wrap! I've read you the lowdown on The Years, so let's do a quick recap.
First of all, in the first part, we chatted about how Ernaux is a bit of a star in the contemporary European literary scene. Her life is full of the everyday struggles and experiences of ordinary women, as well as the strong desire for upward mobility of people from disadvantaged backgrounds in France. Her incredible journey has made her a huge success, but she didn't let poverty hold her back. Instead, she transformed it into her own unique literary experience. In the second part, we are introduced to her absolute masterpiece, The Years. It links Ernaud's life with 14 photographs and evolves her private experiences and emotions into a common story for a whole generation! In terms of writing technique, the book is known as an "impersonal autobiography", with no first-person "I" point of view. This gives the facts a calm and restrained feel, which I think is really lovely. This is also a trait you'll find in lots of modern Western literature. In Part III, we chatted about why we find Ernaux's work so compelling. Ernaud was really brave when she reflected on her own thinking as a "class defector". She also showed us how the underclass in French society suffers mental anguish. But she used literature as a way to break through her personal limitations and understand society. She did it! She succeeded in realizing her literary ambition by understanding the big society through a small individual. From The Long Years, we can understand why the experiences and feelings of ordinary people are important. When we consciously get rid of the limitations of narcissism and relate our own selves to the sorrows and joys of others, writing has the power to transcend the individual and move the heart!