Description
Book SynopsisA revelatory meditation on class and consumer culture, from 2022 Nobel laureate Annie Ernaux
Trade Review“Translated from the French with great intelligence and sensitivity by Alison Strayer. . . . Ernaux’s diary is a provocation: to accept these life scenes as worthy of our time and attention.”—Kate Briggs,
Washington PostA
New Yorker Best of the Week Pick
“[Ernaux’s] chief mode is curiosity, translated with perfect, inquisitive casualness by Alison L. Strayer. She peeks into shopping carts, eavesdrops on conversations, notices the gender dynamics of salesmanship.”—Laura Marris,
Times Literary Supplement“[Ernaux] studies the ‘great human meeting place’ of the big-box superstore, keeping a diary of her visits to a mall near Paris and analyzing what it means to confront our desires and those of others in the marketplace.”—
New Yorker“A fascinating read. . . . Ernaux provides an ensemble of potent subtexts dealing with practices and people linked through commerce and commodities.” —Sharmila Purkayastha,
The Telegraph (India)
“The subject at the heart of
Look at the Lights, My Love is what we reveal of ourselves in the strange sterility of the store. . . . Ernaux’s singular style conveys both the soullessness and the dreamlike charm of the place.”—Tess Little,
Literary Review“What makes
Look at the Lights a work of art, rather than a manifesto, is the sheer sensuousness of Ernaux’s language . . . the subtle visual, auditory, and tactile details that fill the pages and lend firsthand credibility to the argument. . . . [Ernaux] reanimates a shared humanity that consumerism has flattened out.”—J. Howard Rosier,
The Atlantic“
Look at the Lights, My Love plays a formal sleight-of-hand in the best way, with the feel of a dashed-off journal but the felt experience of a deeply philosophical meditation on the nature of shopping, voyeurism, late-stage capitalism, class, race, and desire.”—Adrienne Raphel,
Paris Review DailyA
World Literature Today Notable Translation of 2023
Praise for the French Edition: “A wonderful addition to Annie Ernaux’s life writings . . . [and] a fascinating contribution to contemporary literature.”—Geneviève Alvarado,
World Literature Today “[A] beautiful book. . . . With rigor and tenderness, Annie Ernaux shows herself. . . . If she says ‘I,’ it is to hear others better. From the margins of a suburban superstore, she illuminates the heart of our lives.”—Jean Birnbaum,
Le Monde
