SOURCE: "Upwardly Mobile Norman," in The Times Literary Supplement, No. 4595, April 26, 1991, p. 23.

Here, Fortune lauds Ernaux's ability to evoke French experiences and an intimate portrait of family life for a universal audience in A Man's Place, which was published in England as Positions.

This exceptionally small book [Positions] is not only a moving personal memorial, but also one of much wider resonance. Annie Ernaux is writing about the life of her working-class father, who came of Normandy peasant stock; and at the same time to a lesser degree—because her focus is on him—recalls her own estrangement from him as a middle-class convent-school education took her to university, and teaching, and a middle-class marriage. She charts, in brilliant, bleached detail, a specifically French experience, though one which can be universally acknowledged.

Her father left school at twelve to work on the farm. Following service in the First...