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A Frozen Woman

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About this listen

This narrative charts Annie Ernaux's teenage awakening and then the parallel progression of her desire to be desirable and her ambition to fulfill herself in her chosen profession - with the inevitable conflict between the two. And then she is 30 years old, a teacher married to an executive, a mother of two infant sons.

She looks after their nice apartment and raises her children. And yet, like millions of other women, she has felt her enthusiasm and curiosity, her strength and her happiness, slowly ebb under the weight of her daily routine. The very condition that everyone around her seems to consider normal and admirable for a woman is killing her.

While each of Ernaux's books contains an autobiographical element, A Frozen Woman, one of Ernaux's early works, concentrates the spotlight piercingly on Annie herself. Mixing affection, rage, and bitterness, A Frozen Woman shows us Ernaux's developing art when she still relied on traditional narrative, before the shortened form emerged that has since become her trademark.

©2019 Dreamscape Media, LLC (P)2019 Dreamscape Media, LLC Art & Literature Authors Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Women Women's Fiction
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Annie Ernaux is like no other. Such a good writer. I can read her again and again. It is a therapy for me. Thank you Annie.

Asdis G. Thorsteinsdottir

Á frozen woman

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The start hooks you, then It gets a bit slow in the middle, and then - suddenly - it's phenomenal. Annie Ernaux writes with such honesty and accuracy and simplicity, she becomes the voice of countless women - every sentence lacerates. Women who have given birth, and women who can relate to the loneliness of new motherhood will find comfort in this, like a friend who understands. And people like me who have not given birth or ever been new mothers will have their eyes opened to what so many go through. A wonderful book, everybody should read this. It's left me a more compassionate person.

And Tavia Gilbert's reading is excellent, too.

Magnificent

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