"As always, Ernaux's marriage of opposites--disgust and adoration, revulsion and emulation, dirt-physical and heady-theoretical--takes place on the whitest of pages. Ernaux's opposites rip her in two in spite of her spare language. ... [Her] art is in her fight with words." --Los Angeles Times

"Ernaux courageously bears witness both to complex multiple truths of family relationships and to the fierce persistence of family love." --Washington Post Book World

"Again blurring the line between memoir and fiction, Ernaux continues the story of her family in journal form ... Several recurring themes are woven throughout, notably those of time, art and the relationship between mother and daughter. Like Ernaux's other work (Shame; Simple Passion), this is 'not literature' exactly, but 'an attempt to salvage part of our lives, to understand, but first to salvage, ' poignant though limited in its reach." --Publishers Weekly