A review by dukegregory
Look at the Lights, My Love by Annie Ernaux

3.0

3.5

Ernaux's consideration of big-box stores is one grounded loosely in an analysis of class, French imperialism, globalized labor, ritual, the extension of traditional gender-roles in a supposedly post-feminist France, community, and her own associations/memories regarding shopping. It's a slight work in Ernaux's catalog, but her concisions and precisions, I feel, affect me toward a clarified gaze: a prism through which to not just see the world's ephemera but actively process it instead of taking life's phenomena for granted.