The Years

By: Annie Ernaux

Narrated by: Anna Bentinck

The Years is a personal narrative of the period of 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present - even projections into the future - photos, books, songs, radio, television, and decades of advertising and headlines, contrasted with intimate conflicts and written notes from six decades of diaries. Local dialect, words of the time, slogans, brands, and names for ever-proliferating objects are given a voice here. The voice we recognize as the author's continually dissolves and re-emerges. Ernaux makes the passage of time palpable. Time itself, inexorable, narrates its own course, consigning all other narrators to anonymity. A new kind of autobiography emerges, at once subjective and impersonal, private and collective.

On its 2008 publication in France, The Years came as a surprise. Although Ernaux had, for years, been hailed as a beloved best-selling and award-winning author, The Years was in many ways a departure: both an intimate memoir written by entire generations and a story of generations telling a very personal story.

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insightful, a subjective take at time passing

great performance and the story is oddly gripping. The completely objective voice with which we experience a subjective worldview is bizarre and extremely immersive

A masterpiece

I am a French-speaking Francophile and loved learning so much about life there throughout the years.

Collective memoir

The book is a personal narrative from 1940 to 2007. It’s unlike any memoir I’ve ever read because the author does not use “I” at all but prefers using “we” as she describes what can be called a collective memoir primarily set in France.

Her Narrative Grows on You

Annie Ernaux writes the book she means to write, as you find out by the end. It is a lovely portrait of a time in the world, clearly evoked in all its frustrations and ecstasies. The French social references may not connect much with Americans, but there will be enough familiar landmarks to keep you in step. When she discusses the personal business of aging and memories I think we all can relate to her as a fellow human being.

Poetic, bridled stream of consciousness

There have been 3 books that had an emotional, cathartic effect on me by the end: Don Quixote, 100 years of Solitude, and this book. I loved it.

I felt as if I walked beside her through her life

Ernaux’s elegant writing style makes this more than a walk down memory lane for a person such as I who was born in the same year. Her lucid observations and evaluative commentary allow you into the room/world with her. Highly enjoyable.

An excellent book !

This is a must read … a story of our lives , unfolding !
Anna Ernaux has captured lives of women in the last 8 decades.

Brilliant

A must read from this extraordinary observer of our time - Sartre's contemporary descendant.

A Beautiful Book

I gave "Story" five stars despite the fact that the "story" in this book is not a traditional plot, rather the progress of a woman's lifetime, told in the first person plural and third person plural, and through mentions of events and cultural references, rather than fictive scenes. It is a tour de force, and very effective and evocative: packed with the wisdom of the author's formidable insights looking back at her own life.

That said, younger, non-Frencophone listeners may lack familiarity with many of the cultural references so packed with meaning for older people who remember things like the French New Wave, songs of Edith Piaf and the Paris demonstrations of 1968. This could make the book an opaque catalog for some, yet I hope it will not deter them from gleaning the lovely evocations of thought, time and feeling in the book.

As an elderly English speaker, familiar with many, but not all of the references, I consistently enjoyed the book and found the insights knitted into the narrative profound, especially those relating to aging. In fact, one could call this book a tone poem to the process of aging, whether that of a young girl to adolescence or a mother to being a grandmother. It is lovely to have so many truths so eloquently spoken. That these truths are particular to one life, in one era, does not matter. "War and Peace" does it for one era, "The Catcher in the Rye" for another, and "The Years" for another.

Using "we" and "they" to describe her own lifetime gives the narrative a surprisingly modest tone. It is fiction; we do not know which events actually happened to Mme. Ernaux. But we feel we know this real or fictitious woman quite well, and we like her. We like her modesty, which enables her to see without ego, her analytic mind, her train of memories and her ability to recreate times, places and feelings evocatively often with a sly, self-deprecating humor. This book is well worth reading and Mme. Ernaux's Nobel prize is well-deserved, if only for this one book. She is the Proust of our era. I look forward to reading more of her work.

Last, but not least, Anna Bentink's narration is excellent and fits the book perfectly. I strongly prefer her quiet delivery to the falsely emphatic and harsh orations of American performers, therefore, sadly, will not listen to other Audible recordings of Ernaux's work but read them in print. Alison Strayer's translation is also excellent.

A new way to do a historical novel

Only aspect I didn’t like was the narrator. She does absolutely fine job but was the wrong choice for this book. A hash very English accented voice. The American listener gets about a third of the references but that’s enough to bring this beautiful book to life. In sections it’s powerfully evocative of a time or times. It’s extraordinary personal but works for different nationalities,age and gender. I think works so well because of its limited but focused narrative.