Firstly, although you don\u2019t need to have read any Ernaux to enjoy this book, any reader who has read other texts based on Ernaux\u2019s life will recognise a number of important references in here: her mother\u2019s illness and decline, her reflections on growing up in a post-war working class milieu, her relationships (including her first sexual relationship, an adult affair, and an illegal abortion) and her use of photographs to frame a narrative all feature in other works by Ernaux, and are presented in a different way here. In fact, \u201cpresented in a different way\u201d could sum up everything about this book: it challenges perceptions of autobiography, balances personal triumphs and quiet tragedies with historical atrocities and the implacable passing of time, and offers a fascinating overview of life in France from the 1940s to the 2000s.<\/p>\n
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Testard advertises The Years <\/em>as a \u201ccollective autobiography\u201d, but there is more to be said on this. In one sense it is not collective, since it is written and narrated by only one person, but it is certainly not a \u201ctraditional\u201d memoir. Rather, it is an individual voice representing a collective one: Ernaux herself describes it as an \u201cimpersonal autobiography,\u201d based on a collection of images and reflections, a narrative framed around photographs of the author at different points throughout her life. The girl and woman in the photographs is never explicitly named as Ernaux, but the series of photos provide the reference points through which her past \u2013 and that of her country \u2013 is narrated. The \u201ccollective\u201d aspect is evidenced in the most striking feature of this sort-of-autobiography: Ernaux never uses the first person singular. She does not speak as \u201cI\u201d, but rather \u201cwe\u201d, or occasionally \u201cone.\u201d This narrative style mirrors Ernaux\u2019s own description of the way her relatives told stories of World War II: \u201ceverything was told in the \u2018we\u2019 voice and with impersonal pronouns, as if everyone were equally affected by events.\u201d Adopting the same narrative strategy elevates this from a personal memoir, and instead makes it about events that affected people of Ernaux\u2019s generation: in this way, The Years <\/em>becomes an artefact for the collective memory of a generation. In the translation, the pronoun most regularly used is \u201cwe\u201d, which creates an inclusivity akin to that of the French impersonal pronoun \u201con\u201d, but on the few occasions when Strayer uses \u201cone\u201d in the English translation, it stood out as a little jarring to me (\u201cIt was quite enough that you had to be afraid of making love, now that everyone knew AIDS was not only a disease for homosexuals and drug addicts, contrary to what one had first believed\u201d; \u201cJust getting tested was suspect, an avowal of unspeakable misconduct. One had it done at the hospital, secretly, with a number, avoiding eye contact in the waiting room.\u201d) I can see why Strayer chose the impersonal \u201cone\u201d here, as using \u201cwe\u201d in the first instance implies that she and her peers initially believed AIDS to be a disease for homosexuals and drug addicts, and in the second instance would confirm that she and her peers went to the hospital for AIDS tests. I imagine that the sudden shift to \u201cone\u201d was a decision not made lightly, but can\u2019t help thinking that something truly impersonal (the non-specific mass noun “people”, for example, or a passive, if we accept a shift in agency), might have stuck out a little less here \u2013 especially in the first instance, when the subject shifts from \u201cyou\u201d to \u201ceveryone\u201d to \u201cone\u201d.<\/p>\n Where the impersonal pronouns do work well, and map neatly onto the French original, is in Ernaux\u2019s description of herself via photographs in the third person singular, \u201cshe.\u201d The woman in the photographs hopes to write about \u201can existence that is singular but also merged with the movements of a generation,\u201d and this is the great strength of The Years<\/em>: its universality. Anyone who lived through the events Ernaux describes \u2013 even if not as closely as those who lived in France \u2013 will be able to relate to the global political shifts of the last sixty years (\u201c1968 was the first year of the world\u201d) and the technological advances of the 21st<\/sup> century (\u201ca world that moves ahead in leaps and bounds\u201d). Nonetheless, Ernaux eschews self-congratulation for her enterprise, noting with irony that \u201cin the humdrum routine of personal existence, History did not matter. We were simply happy or unhappy, depending on the day.\u201d This daily life is in part deliberately banal, in part coloured by history, but always recognisable and always beautifully observed. The Years <\/em>is nostalgic yet still contemporary, from the pronouncement that progress means buying more to the description of fearing Arabs on the street during the Algerian war.<\/p>\n Women\u2019s history is, unsurprisingly, at the forefront of many of the historical narratives: from equal access to education and \u201cthe deadly time ruled by their blood\u201d that preceded the legalisation of contraception to the facilitating of backstreet abortions being likened to the Resistance of World War 2 and the revolution of May \u201968, Ernaux brings to life a specifically female experience of \u201cthe years\u201d. These are underlined by a gritty realism, however, as May \u201968 is described as neither as momentous nor as glorious as the recurrent camera images, and Ernaux notes that \u201cthe struggle of women sank into oblivion. It was the only struggle that had not been officially revived in collective memory.\u201d The Years <\/em>helps to combat this, reviving the struggle of women in a conscious contribution to collective memory, and an attempt to allow a generation to own its collective history.<\/p>\n \u201cJust as her older relatives used to gather around the family table to eat and to share memories that became their version of history, now it is Ernaux\u2019s turn \u2013 and with her, her generation \u2013 to \u2018tell the story of the time-before.\u2019\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The Years <\/em>is a book that defies translation: how can we translate a novel that is like a memory box of post-war French culture? Yet we have to try, and that Strayer has produced a page-turning, non-alienating piece of literature is a remarkable feat. There are some minor inconsistencies in the translation, though. For example, song and book titles are sometimes given in French with no footnote, sometimes given in French with a translation in the footnote, and sometimes given in translation. It must have been quite an endeavour for the translator to decide which would be recognisable more universally, and which would not. Radio and television shows are dealt with in the same way: Les Guignols de l\u2019Info <\/em>is given a footnote, but All\u00f4 Macha <\/em>is not. The quintessentially French \u201cminitel\u201d (a pre-internet information system) is left as \u201cthe minitel\u201d, and one footnote makes reference to \u201can untranslatable fart joke.\u201d Strayer\u2019s approach mostly seems to correspond to Michael Hoffman\u2019s posi<\/a>tion<\/a> that \u201cwhat matters to me[\u2026] is providing an experience, not footnoting one that might have been in had in another language, if only the reader had been conversant in that\u201d\u00a0– she provides an experience with minimal footnoting, recognising that it will not be the same and that endless footnotes would not make it any more comparable to the original. Though there is the occasional inconsistency or turn of phrase that gave me pause for thought, these are small details in an otherwise beautiful manuscript, that takes Ernaux’s masterpiece and offers it as an experience to a new readership.<\/p>\n As a true meta-narrative, the book ends with the woman in the photographs deciding to write down her story, which will be \u201ca slippery narrative composed in an unremitting continuous tense, absolute, devouring the present as it goes, all the way to the final image of a life.\u201d To cover more than half a century in such incisive detail, in under 250 pages, is an achievement in itself: the passing of time is palpable throughout, but the narrative never feels rushed. Rather, this is a handing-down of an obligation to remember. Just as her older relatives used to gather around the family table to eat and to share memories that became their version of history, now it is Ernaux\u2019s turn \u2013 and with her, her generation \u2013 to \u201ctell the story of the time-before\u201d; translating this important work into English contributes to this imperative to remember.<\/p>\n
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