The Years by Annie Ernaux for Waterstones Book Club

590.

Image by WikiImages from Pixabay

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It’s very French, isn’t it?

Brilliant translation into English by which

Something was gained but also lost.

I remember “vachement” from

My three week trip at fourteen

To France to learn French

From a very unwilling French girl,

Horrified and amusee by

My terrible uncoolness.

And the text dumps us into a whirlwind

Of memory of things that seemed

To change slowly but, in fact,

With terrifying speed

Became the homogenized reality

We now know as our fate.

Les Philosophes didn’t warn anyone

About it.

Nobody got the advisory.

They lost the Catholic Church and gained TV;

They lost certainty and gained laptops;

They lost themselves and gained

A certain chic, a tiny sauvagerie

Among the phones.

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You might like the first book in my Elizabethan Noir Trilogy — FIREDRAKE’S EYE