The Years

All of Ernaux's work blurs the line between fiction and memoir, but The Years blurs it further, into history. The book covers a lifetime—hers, from 1941 to the present—but it is the history of a "we" much more than an "I." (Or, from another perspective, it shows how much any "I" depends on the "we" it's part of.) She progresses impressionistically from war through postwar austerity through personal liberation and social revolution into our tech-mediated times, marking moments with the shared ephemera of clothing, pop culture, and sexual mores no less than French milestones like Algeria and May 1968. For an American reader, the effect is to see those years through the novelty of another national experience; for any reader, the effect is a poignant immersion in the fleetingness of human identities and attachments.