Cleaned Out

by Annie Ernaux, Carol Sanders (Translator), Carol Sanders (Afterword)

Overview

Cleaned Out tells the story of Denise Lesur, a 20-year-old woman suffering the after-effects of a back-alley abortion. Alone in her college dorm room, Denise attempts to understand how her suffocating middle-class upbringing has brought her to such an awful present. Ernaux, one of France's most important contemporary writers, daringly breaks with formal French literary tradition in this moving novel about abortion, growing up, and coming to terms with one's childhood.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781564781390
Publisher:	Dalkey Archive Press
Publication date:	09/28/1996
Series:	French Literature Series
Edition description:	2nd ed.
Pages:	127
Product dimensions:	5.53(w) x 8.53(h) x 0.41(d)

About the Author

Annie Ernaux a publie son premier roman Les armoires vides en 1974. Couronnee par le prix Renaudot en 1984 pour La place, elle est notamment l'auteur d'Une femme (1988), de Passion simple (1992) et de La honte (1997), parus aux editions Gallimard.

Sanders is Professor of French, Department of Linguistic and International Studies, University of Surrey.

Carol Sanders is Professor of French at the University of Surrey.

Editorial Reviews

Written with raw and powerful images, Annie Ernaux says the 'unsayable' as she confronts the experience of having an abortion and of growing up in the post-World War II generation?all in a fresh, original voice.

San Francisco Chronicle

Cleaned Outis more than a powerful evocation of the class system in France in the 1950s and of one woman's struggle to move up in the class hierarchy and forget her past. It is also a novel that serves as a haunting contribution, both in subject matter and literary form, to the project of the culturally disenfranchised speaking in their own voice.

Bloomsbury Review

Denise, a 20-year-old college student who has just had a back-alley abortion, lies alone in her dorm room and ponders her rejection of her well-meaning parents. PW called this ``a tough story of a young girl's coming-of-age in postwar France, a story filled with the spirit of Elvis, Sartre, jazz and the nasty little verities of adolescence.'' (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Published in French as Les Armoires Vides in 1974, this first novel takes us into the inner consciousness of a 20-year-old college student who has undergone a backstreet abortion, as she tries to understand the present by reflecting on the past. Denise Lesur is fearful of dying from the abortion, guilt-ridden because she has used her impoverished parents' hard-earned money (intended for her education) to pay for it, and resentful of both their vulgarity and the refinement of her snobbish classmates. Without romanticizing or moralizing, Ernaux imaginatively and artfully presents a universal theme: the hopefulness and hopelessness of life.-- Jeris Cassel, Rutgers Univ. Libs., New Brunswick, N.J.

Library Journal