It begins with a girl who believes intelligence and freedom will carry her somewhere else; then becomes an account of what happens when the old arrangements of gender quietly reassert themselves anyway. 

Ernaux writes with that cold, exact clarity she does better than almost anyone: not confessional in the soft sense, not sociological in the dead sense, but brutally alert to the way desire, labour, ambition, and humiliation get organised inside a life. It is a feminist book, obviously, but more than that it is a book about consciousness under pressure—how a person notices themselves disappearing in real time. 

One of her sharpest books on gender, class, and the social manufacture of femininity.

First English-language hardcover edition, Four Walls Eight Windows, New York, 1995. Translated from the French by Linda Coverdale. In near fine condition.