By the time Ernaux published I Remain in Darkness, she had already written and published A Woman's Story, which was based on her mother's life and death. However, the bulk of Ernaux's writing revisits the themes of growing up and familial relationships. As James Sallis writes in The Review of Contemporary Fiction, "Annie Ernaux's work is remarkably of a piece, each book circling back to paraphrase, correct, emendate, and reinvent earlier ones." Novelist Kathryn Harrison, writing for the New York Times Book Review, points out, however, that the "sympathy between novel and memoir is not a matter of mere repetition." Harrison finds that the latter work "serves as a more intimate revelation of the slow death that prompted her to bear witness to the life that was ebbing.'

Some reviewers shared praise for I Remain in Darkness. Sallis was of the opinion that was "a...