Draft:A Woman's Story (Ernaux novel)

A Woman's Story (French: Une femme) is French author Annie Ernaux's fifth novel. It was originally published in French in 1988 with Éditions Gallimard and translated into English by Tanya Leslie in 2003.

Following Ernaux's La Place, the 1984 Prix Renaudot winning novel about the life of her father, this book is instead centered around the life and death of the author's mother. She recounts her mother's past, from the factory where she works in her adolescence, to her retirement home and eventual hospitalization. She also mentions the plastic bag she finds in her mother's hospital room, in which the staff left various objects and articles of clothing belonging to her just-passed mother.

Translation

 * Tanya Leslie, A Woman's Story, Seven Stories Press, 2003
 * (it) Lorenzo Flabbi, Una Donna, L'orma editore, 2018
 * (de), Eine Frau, Berlin, Suhrkamp, 2019

Reception
Although very similar in theme to her previous novel, La Place, the book was praised by Josyane Savigneau who, in the same year of its original publication, said that "Annie Ernaux a encore gagné en sobriété et en maîtrise" (trans. "Annie Ernaux has once again gained in restraint and mastery of work").

According to Philippe Vilain, writing ten years after the book's publication, "ces récits d'Annie Ernaux brouillent les classifications ordinaires sans jamais s'inscrire dans un genre precis ou se laisser circonscrire par lui" (trans. "these accounts by Annie Ernaux blur the lines of our ordinary classifications, never adhering or confining themselves to a specific genre, which gives her work a unique dimension"). He highlights comments made by Annie Ernaux, saying "her accounts are neither biographies nor novels, but 'perhaps something between literature, sociology, and history,'" ("ses récits ne sont ni des biographies, ni des romans, mais 'peut-être quelque chose entre la littérature, la sociologie, et l'histoire'") and brings up a citation of her saying "I'm trying to describe and explain these events as if they were about another mother, and about a girl that was not myself" ("j'essaie de décrire et d'expliquer comme s'il s'agissait d'une autre mère et d'une fille qui ne serait pas moi") .