A review by quiver
Simple Passion by Annie Ernaux
4.0
Roland Barthes wrote: "Am I in love? --yes, since I am waiting. The other one never waits. Sometimes I want to play the part of the one who doesn't wait; I try to busy myself elsewhere, to arrive late; but I always lose at this game. Whatever I do, I find myself there, with nothing to do, punctual, even ahead of time. The lover's fatal identity is precisely this: I am the one who waits."
It is a quote that lingered with me when I read this book. For it is not merely a book about an affair and passion, but also about the solitude of waiting, illusions, and being haunted by desire that debilitates and exhilarates. It is about being alone with one's desire even within the arms of the desired one; about the strangeness of the other; how they remain within the shadows of being unknown: "the man we love is a complete stranger."
Desire is fueled by waiting and distance.
The desire Ernaux held was of the kind that can touch and live within the margins of madness. Madness and bliss, violent and consuming. She writes intimately and yet simply of what one seldom discusses openly: the private inner world of desire, love, anxiety, jealousy, madness. Mostly such confessions and intimate thoughts wither in, or are betrayed by, language. It does not occur in her book. This book, a slim volume, felt somehow quite precious, almost like a secret, and one listens -- reads -- indeed, as if to a secret.
It is a quote that lingered with me when I read this book. For it is not merely a book about an affair and passion, but also about the solitude of waiting, illusions, and being haunted by desire that debilitates and exhilarates. It is about being alone with one's desire even within the arms of the desired one; about the strangeness of the other; how they remain within the shadows of being unknown: "the man we love is a complete stranger."
Desire is fueled by waiting and distance.
The desire Ernaux held was of the kind that can touch and live within the margins of madness. Madness and bliss, violent and consuming. She writes intimately and yet simply of what one seldom discusses openly: the private inner world of desire, love, anxiety, jealousy, madness. Mostly such confessions and intimate thoughts wither in, or are betrayed by, language. It does not occur in her book. This book, a slim volume, felt somehow quite precious, almost like a secret, and one listens -- reads -- indeed, as if to a secret.