LA Place

La Place looks at a daughter’s relationship with her father. In a fragmented and retrospective way the narrator describes her feelings of separation and betrayal that arise when education and marriage place her in a social class with different values, language, tastes and behaviour. She explores the ways in which individual experience is related to class and group attitudes and at the same time tells us a great deal about French society in general since the turn of the century. It is a concentrated text, cut through with irony and may be read in different ways. La Place will be an accessible and exciting addition to French studies courses.

Annie Ernaux was born in 1940 at Lillebonne, near the mouth of the Seine. Her early years were spent in the Lillebonne, Lisieux, Yvetot area, where her parents had a ‘café-épicerie’. After leaving school, she took a Lettres modernes degree and then the agrégation. She became a schoolteacher in the outskirts of Paris. She now teaches French literature at university level on a télé-enseignement course. Edited by P.M . Wetherill, Professor of French, University of Manchester.