Shame
By: Annie Ernaux ; translated by Tanya Leslie.
Contributors: Leslie, Tanya.
Edition: A Seven Stories Press 1st ed.
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Translated from: fre
Number of pages: 111
Subjects: Ernaux, Annie, 1940- -- Childhood and youth; Authors, French -- 20th century -- Biography
Description: "My father tried to kill my mother one Sunday in June, in the early afternoon." Shame begins as the story of a twelve-year-old girl, but it is also about the storyteller, a mature woman, the author herself. The violent moment lives inside her. The trauma comes at a moment when she is still so close to her mother and father that the threatened act of violence is incomprehensible. It cuts through her like an axe.

Over time, the memory cools until it is just a snapshot she carries in her purse, unchanging even after years have passed and the twelve-year-old girl has grown into an orgasmic woman and a writer. Years later the cut is still there, but her whole being has grown around it like a tree that has been struck by lightning and survived.