A Frozen Woman - by Annie Ernaux (Paperback)

About the Book

This sequel to A Man's Place and prequel to Simple Passion is Ernaux's description of a transformation from girlhood into womanhood. A fictionalized account of the author's teenage awakening and of her later life as a 30-year-old married teacher and mother of two infant sons, A Frozen Woman mixes affection, rage, and bitterness to reveal Ernaux at her most harrowing, affecting, and inspiring.

Book Synopsis

WINNER OF THE 2022 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE

A Frozen Woman charts 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 thirty years old, a teacher married to an executive, mother of two infant sons. She looks after their nice apartment, 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 contain 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.

Review Quotes

"Unflagging truth-telling ... limpid perfection, uncluttered Gallic grace, words arranged in harmony." -Los Angeles Times

"Annie Ernaux concisely charts telling moments during adolescence love, marriage, career, and motherhood ..." -St. Louis Post Dispatch

About the Author

Born in 1940, ANNIE ERNAUX grew up in Normandy, studied at Rouen University, and began teaching high school. From 1977 to 2000, she was a professor at the Centre National d'Enseignement par Correspondance. Her books, in particular A Man's Place and A Woman's Story, have become contemporary classics in France. She won the prestigious Prix Renaudot for A Man's Place when it was first published in French in 1984. The English edition was a New York Times Notable Book and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. The English edition of A Woman's Story was a New York Times Notable Book.