The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Exteriors by Annie Ernaux
John O'Brien

Annie Ernaux. Exteriors. Trans. Tanya Leslie. Seven Stories Press, 1996. 95 pp. $16.00.

It has always seemed to me that a great deal of “description” and “details” in novels are done a disservice by being made to serve the “story.” That is, an opening paragraph in a typical novel exists for the sake of setting up character and story, its language subservient to these, and its function finally reduced to that of background music and decoration; in other words, the point is to get past these things, to get to the story, for which these serve as introduction. In Exteriors Annie Ernaux foregrounds these materials, composing a book made up of short sections whose purpose is to isolate these details in and for themselves: phrases overheard in a grocery store, graffiti scribbled on a wall, a train passenger clipping his nails, what’s playing on the Sunday morning radio. More often than not, such registrations are made without comment and even more often without reminder that the person registering is a novelist—this is not a romantic attempt at showing how a writer sees the world. Instead, Ernaux gives the world its due; the details, the overheard phrases, a brief scene from a train’s window—here they are, in themselves. Taken in a certain direction, these could have turned into prose poems, but I think Ernaux purposely stays clear of that form, as much as she does the diary form despite a 1985-92 frame for the book. Instead, she presents and recognizes the everyday, the mundane, the trivial, all of which undergo a strange transformation when so isolated. This is a remarkable piece of writing, and one of the first new books to be published by Seven Stories Press. [John O’Brien]


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction Exteriors by Annie Ernaux John O'Brien Annie Ernaux. Exteriors. Trans. Tanya Leslie. Seven Stories Press, 1996. 95 pp. $16.00. It has always seemed to me that a great deal of “description” and “details” in novels are done a disservice by being made to serve the “story.” That is, an opening paragraph in a typical novel exists for the sake of setting up character and story, its language subservient to these, and its function finally reduced to that of background music and decoration; in other words, the point is to get past these things, to get to the story, for which these serve as introduction. In Exteriors Annie Ernaux foregrounds these materials, composing a book made up of short sections whose purpose is to isolate these details in and for themselves: phrases overheard in a grocery store, graffiti scribbled on a wall, a train passenger clipping his nails, what’s playing on the Sunday morning radio. More often than not, such registrations are made without comment and even more often without reminder that the person registering is a novelist—this is not a romantic attempt at showing how a writer sees the world. Instead, Ernaux gives the world its due; the details, the overheard phrases, a brief scene from a train’s window—here they are, in themselves. Taken in a certain direction, these could have turned into prose poems, but I think Ernaux purposely stays clear of that form, as much as she does the diary form despite a 1985-92 frame for the book. Instead, she presents and recognizes the everyday, the mundane, the trivial, all of which undergo a strange transformation when so isolated. This is a remarkable piece of writing, and one of the first new books to be published by Seven Stories Press. [John O’Brien]

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