Summary

Ernaux continues her memoir by describing the rise of right-wing political backlash in response to the development of ‘banlieues’ – neighborhoods in which poorer immigrants lived, with many of them being of specifically North African Arab descent. She writes that the ‘new’ young generation, coming of age in this climate, expressed outrage at the racism they saw in French politics. Meanwhile, the Catholic religion had ceased to be a significant influence in the lives of most French people and boys and girls entered into adulthood fully used to coexisting with one another, unlike in the past. She describes a video in which the woman previously photographed is shown speaking to her students, for she is a teacher. She feels she is getting older and fears losing her ability to be a free sexual being. She now has a lover and pampers her sons when...