In , I was 34 and a mother. Our walls were taupe. I would never buy bread from the local supermarket. Still, as it has been with every book by Annie Ernaux, I read Happening stunned by the feeling that she wrote specially for me.
She wrote about an upbringing in a social class that was opposite to mine. Beyond our social differences Ernaux and I belonged to two different worlds in another sense. I was born in , after the feminist and sexual revolution, convinced it was the best moment in history.
I had an abortion, I was 17, my father drove me back and forth to this same chic clinic. In , when Annie Ernaux had her abortion, it was a crime punishable by law.
She describes herself looking through libraries for books in which the heroine wants to get an abortion. She was hoping to find companionship in literature; she found nothing. She felt even more resolutely cast back into her solitude, reduced to her social condition.
Illegal abortion, with its physical and moral brutality, was at that time a matter of obscure local rumor. It was an upsetting story. Happening was a minor work.
