Look at the Lights, My Love -- Annie Ernaux, Paperback

A revelatory meditation on class and consumer culture, from 2022 Nobel laureate Annie Ernaux

"A dryly charming look at the way the French live now, through the sharp eyes of its most acclaimed chronicler."--Kirkus Reviews

For half a century, the French writer Annie Ernaux has transgressed the boundaries of what stories are considered worth telling, what subjects worth exploring. In this probing meditation, Ernaux turns her attention to the phenomenon of the big-box superstore, a ubiquitous feature of modern life that has received scant attention in literature.

Recording her visits to a store near Paris for over a year, she captures the world that exists within its massive walls. Through Ernaux's eyes, the superstore emerges as "a great human meeting place, a spectacle"--a flashy, technologically advanced incarnation of the ancient marketplace where capitalism, cultural production, and class converge, dictating our rhythms of desire. With her relentless powers of observation, Ernaux takes the measure of a place we thought we knew, calling us to question the experiences we overlook and to gaze more deeply into ordinary life.

Author: Annie Ernaux
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 04/04/2023
Pages: 96
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.25lbs
ISBN: 9780300268218

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 02/01/2023
Booklist 03/01/2023 pg. 13

About the Author
Annie Ernaux is the winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature. She is the author of more than twenty books, including The Years, A Woman's Story, A Man's Place, Shame, and Simple Passion. Alison L. Strayer is an award-winning writer and translator.