Shame

Review

A few months ago for my small press book club we read The Years, also by Ernaux. I enjoyed it, and felt a strong pull to read it in the original French.

Yet, what puts Ernaux on my radar isn’t necessarily that, it was that someone in that book club spoke so passionately about Ernaux (they were wearing a shirt that said “Annie Ernaux” on it, also). I can’t remember what they said, but I remember the affection and admiration for the author’s works. So, when I was on Fitzcarlando’s website looking for an excuse to buy a pretty book, Ernaux was a perfect choice. Especially since the title is a thing I am fascinated by and feel often.

In Shame, Ernaux dissects an event from her childhood, the context around it, the scenes and smells and pressures and transformative effect of this event.

I could not help but think about my childhood, something I’ve written about elsewhere, and the impacts a similar series of events had on me. The word “shame” only appears once in that essay. Reading this, I see so much more of it in myself. I begin to hear it in my thoughts and put a name to this feeling. Knowing that you feel shame, and identifying that feeling, are not exactly the same thing.

“The worst thing about shame is that we imagine we are the only ones to experience it.”

In the closing pages, Ernaux says, “I have always wanted to write the sort of book that I find it impossible to talk about afterwards, the sort of book that makes it impossible for me to withstand the gaze of others. But what degree of shame could possibly be conveyed by the writing of a book which seeks to measure up to the events I experienced in my twelfth year.”

I relate to this, I know the texture of the thought. It’s as though you might excise those feelings from your heart and mind if you exposed them to everyone, if you made your confession of all your faults and errors and bad qualities and mistakes and embarrassments and blemishes. How vulnerable are you willing to be? I like this investigation. How much of yourself are you willing to show? Will it be enough to wash it all away?

“We stopped being decent people,” Ernaux says of her family following the event. Shame and Goodness. Shame precludes one from feeling good about themselves, feeling that they are or can be good.

Another thought: shame and pride are close kin. Ernaux does not explore pride, not even the shame of pride. I think this is interesting.