It would be easy to assume or guess that this Annie Ernaux novel about a young woman needing to seek out, as she calls out, “a back alley abortion” is already covered in the auto-fiction book “A Happening”, and in some ways it is. This is Annie Ernaux’s debut novel from the early 1970s, and while both probably have some place in truth (certainly “A Happening” does), this book is so much more a novel.
They also cover much different ground. The story in “A Happening” focuses more on the structures that lead to her both needing an abortion and having such a difficult time obtaining. It’s a scary story that involves cultural and state surveillance of personal lives, especially women, and the scolding that even the most sympathetic of doctors gives her. It’s also a reminder that “Liberal France” still had some stark conservative streaks.
This book more so explores the emotional experience of the event and how those emotions are cultivated and created not inherently within the mind and heart of the narrator, but within the cultural forces that castigate and judge a woman for finding herself in need of a medical procedure, along with the political and repressive structures that push that procedure into the “back alleys”. There’s an early sentiment here: how did I end up being the kind of girl who needed to get a “back alley” abortion. The answer is complicated and wrapped up in misogyny, both internal and external, and what forces control that.
