The Possession

by Annie Ernaux, Anna Moschovakis (Translator)

WINNER OF THE 2022 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE

Self-regard, in the works of Annie Ernaux, is always an excruciatingly painful and exact process. Here, she revisits the peculiar kind of self-fulfillment possible when we examine ourselves in the aftermath of a love affair, and sometimes, even, through the eyes of the lost beloved.

Genres: Fiction, France, French Literature, Nobel Prize, Literary Fiction, Contemporary, Audiobook

62 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2002

About the author

The author of some twenty works of fiction and memoir, Annie Ernaux is considered by many to be France’s most important writer. In 2022, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. She has also won the Prix Renaudot for A Man's Place and the Marguerite Yourcenar Prize for her body of work. More recently she received the International Strega Prize, the Prix Formentor, the French-American Translation Prize, and the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation for The Years, which was also shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize in 2019. Her other works include Exteriors, A Girl's Story, A Woman's Story, The Possession, Simple Passion, Happening, I Remain in Darkness, Shame, A Frozen Woman, and A Man's Place.

Reviews

[Ilse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nobel prize in literature 2022 "for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory"

The other woman



The strangest thing about jealousy is that it can populate an entire city, the whole world, with a person you have never met.

When a friend who was reading this book recently posted this quote, I knew this brief book would become my first foray into the work of Annie Ernaux. Insecurity, uncertainty, low self-esteem, a brain working on perpetual overtime, generating new scenario’s endlessly, a mind filling in the blanks and giving disconcerting answers, the threat of the unknown– as it seemed I was losing myself in a maelstrom of emotions I didn’t recognize or understand, I was randomly looking for an anchor, perhaps a second opinion on a self-diagnosis in fiction dealing with jealously, wondering (and still not sure) if that was the name for the feelings of restlessness, sorrow and anxiety which were tormenting me at that moment, gliding into an interior state in which my mind seemed completely taken over by my imagination, insomnia included.

As a quick search bringing forth this list left me somewhat dissatisfied, the emergence on my radar of this book on the obsession of a woman on the new woman in the life of her ex seemed eerily timely. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it as an brilliant study through self-analysis of the devastating power of this kind of thoughts and emotions from a female perspective.

I was no longer free in my daydreams. I was no longer the subject even of my own fantasies. I was being inhabited by a woman I had never seen.

After she has left her lover W., the narrator gets entirely obsessed by the new woman in his life, trying to track her like a detective with the few clues that her ex discloses on her in their on-going encounters, investigating the pieces on her life which she carefully extorts from him and which enable her to go on building her own imaginary castles of mental torture.

For the first time, I could clearly perceive the material nature of feelings and emotions – I physically felt their consistency, their form but also their independence, their perfect freedom with respect to my consciousness.

In this succinct, raw and uncomfortably intense analysis the narrator dissects how she gets occupied by and eventually frees herself from emotions so awkward and humiliating one would prefer to hide them from the outside world as one is hardly able to admit them to oneself - her writing helping her to transform them and stop the new woman from taking possession of her thoughts. Noticing that her standards on behaviour she previously would have ridiculed or denounced are shifting, the narrator gradually becomes aware that the irrationality of her thoughts and emotions is barely tolerable and destructive, realising in the end they are especially self-destructive.

I beg to differ with Ernaux’s assertion that the Other is the main source of our suffering as well as of our happiness. L’enfer, c’est les autres? No, this kind of suffering is deeply rooted in ourselves and our own issues, it is a kind of suffering which is self-inflicted and cannot be cured but by calling your mind to order (hard as such is). I was surprised by that statement, as throughout her entire discourse Ernaux seems to illustrate how it is your own mind which can be your worst enemy, in this matter making you suffer more than a person’s real acts can do. Which doesn’t mean the narrator’s suffering, nor her feelings of powerlessness against the other’s woman’s existence or her feelings of inferiority can be simply solved by denying them, therefore their impact is all too real and fragilizing her identity: In the self-erasure that is the state of jealously, which transforms every difference into a lack , it was not only my body, my face, that were devaluated but also my occupation – my entire being.



Like people made fragile by disease or depression, I was an echo chamber for all pain everywhere.

A dark, at times brutal, unsettling and fascinating descent into the convoluted human mind and heart.

(pictures by Gary Isaacs)

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘To give a title to the moments of one’s life, the way one does at school for literary passages, is perhaps a way to master them?’

When I first encountered Annie Ernaux I was impressed and eager for more, but after the raw intensity that is The Possession I would perch beside her throne and hiss like a cat at anyone who would so much look at her sideways. Ernaux has such a strong, defined voice and personality that it feels as if it's always leaping out from the pages as if her own perfectly chosen words can’t even contain it. What she does best is occupy the space of an emotion and brilliantly map it out like a landscape; here she deftly maneuvers through feelings of jealousy and obsession that have taken hold of her, possessed her every being. ‘I was being inhabited by a woman I had never seen,’ she writes of the ‘Other woman’ with whom her former lover has now decided to live with and over the course of this slim book we witness her project the Other woman into all the women around her as she obsesses with discovering her identity. Brimming with emotional intensity, yet restrained and almost clinical in her examinations of them, The Possession is a sharp book that will sear right into you as she opens the doors to interrogate herself at her most vulnerable and insecure, all while demonstrating the healing power of writing.

‘The strangest thing about jealousy is that it can populate an entire city - the whole world - with a person you may never have met.’

Ernaux’s The Possession manages to be a sweeping portrait restrained into a singular idea and series of events. Framed as being written years later, reflecting upon the past, it opens as her younger lover, with whom she had a lengthy affair, has moved in with another woman and sets the new terms of their friendship. She had been hesitant to commit after divorcing and now he has moved on, once again with a woman older than himself who he refuses to name. ‘This absent name was a hole, a void around which I turned in circles,’ she says as she becomes obsessed with thoughts of this woman and ways in which she could identify her.

‘It seemed to me that to put a name to this woman would allow me to construct, out of what is always awakened by a word and its sounds, a personality type: to hold an image of her—even if a completely false one—inside me. To know the name of the other woman was, in my own deficiency of being, to own a little part of her.’

There is a mutli-faceted idea of possession here, being possessed with wanting to track her down (as it’s own way of possessing her) and the jealousy of no longer being possessed by her lover as the Other woman now is. We see her mind spiraling, the ‘incessant de-coding’ of everything he says to her, her plans and actions of finding out more and obsessive internet rabbit-holes of information to put together an impression of her Other. ‘I discovered that these details by which society defines a person’s identity, which we so easily dismiss as irrelevant to truly knowing someone, are in fact essential,’ she writes, ‘they were the only way to…conjure up a body, a lifestyle; to construct the image of an individual person.’ Much like the way Ernaux examined all the external details of society to discover the shape of her shame in Shame , here Ernaux attempts to define the shape of the Other’s void with personal details.

'It was as if, in this neighborhood which I had filled with the other woman’s existence, there was no room left for my own.'

While projecting the Other into every woman she encounters, she finds herself ‘an echo chamber for all pain everywhere,’ and ‘projected myself into all those who—crazier or more audacious than me—had in any way “blown a fuse.”’ A favorite moment is her sort of sick satisfaction in wonderinging--possibly hoping--her own behaviors will be some sort of cautionary tale men whisper in bars when discussing exes. There is a sense that she acknowledges the self-destructive urges that are slowly pulling her closer into action, but she finds a sense of power in them that she seems to find darkly delicious. She restrains herself, usually out of self preservation, but the book always feels teetering on the cliff of scandelous disaster.

‘Writing has been a way to save that which is no longer my reality—a sensation seizing me from head to foot, in the street—but has become “the possession,” a period of time, circumscribed and completed.’

Nothing satisfies and she becomes increasingly frustrated, thinking ‘But something more was needed, and I didn’t know where it would come from—from chance, from the outside, or from within myself.’ An aspect I loved is how she turns to writing as a sort of exorcism that removes the desires from the self and onto a page to share, be it a letter to her former lover or to us, the reader of this very book: ‘it is no longer my desire, my jealousy, in these pages—it is of desire, of jealousy; I am working in invisible things.’ While each page is a gem, it is when she discusses her own memoir mechanics that I was most enraptured by her brilliant mind:

‘I am writing jealousy as I lived it, tracking and accumulating the desires, sensations, and actions that were mine during this period. It’s the only way for me to make something real of my obsession. And I am always afraid to let something essential escape. Writing, that is, as a jealousy of the real.’

This is such an accurate look at what Ernaux seems to do with her autobiographical writing, reconstruction of the real in order to pass the emotional resonance directly into the reader while acknowledging that words are a flawed net with which we can attempt to define the shape of the reality that is forever eluding us as we are plunged forward by time.

‘The existence of this woman had become a reality, indestructible and atrocious. It was like a statue emerging from the mud.’

Short, easily read in a single sitting, but with a raw emotion that lands in blow after blow, The Possession is a real treat. Ernaux has such a gift of voice that makes these relatively plotless investigations of memory into gripping reads that engulf you. Needless to say, I will be reading many more.

4.5/5

‘In the self-erasure that is the state of jealously, which transforms every difference into a lack , it was not only my body, my face, that were devaluated but also my occupation – my entire being.’

[Guille · Rating 4 out of 5]

Empezaré por el tirón de orejas a la editorial: dadas las pocas páginas de esta novela y de «El hombre joven», escrita veinte años después y que, supongo, tratan del mismo hombre, bien podrían haber publicado un volumen conjunto que nos evitara la sensación de estafa.

“Estaba en ambos sentidos de la palabra ocupada”

No obstante, quiero dejar claro que no me quejo de la brevedad del relato. Pese a su limitada extensión, la novela abarca todo lo que concierne al caso, y la prolongación, quizás, no hubiera sido otra cosa que repetir o remarcar innecesariamente lo ya bien dicho. Bien es cierto que tampoco hubiera hecho ascos a unas cuantas páginas más en las que seguir deleitándome con la descripción de su dolor y de las reflexiones a la que ese dolor la lleva, tal es el morbo que me provoca su impudor.

“He querido escribir como si tuviera que estar ausente cuando se publicara el texto. Escribir como si tuviera que morir y ya no hubiera jueces. Aunque sea una ilusión, quizá, creer que el advenimiento de la verdad dependa solo de la muerte”

No es esta, la primera frase de la novela, la única con la que Ernaux intenta justificar su llamativo striptease sentimental, algo que con la autora viene siendo ya un lugar común. Quizás también a ella le produzca cierto morbo abrirse de esta forma, reconocer tan crudamente los enfermizos celos que en ella surgieron al enterarse de que su examante, bastante más joven que ella y al que ella misma dejó, salía con otra mujer, una mujer, para más inri, también bastante mayor que él.

“Lo más extraordinario de los celos es que se puebla una ciudad, el mundo, con un ser al que no se conoce de nada.”

He leído por ahí que esta novela es como un hijo menor de «Pura pasión». No estoy de acuerdo. Aquí no hay pasión ni amor que valga, aquí se trata de otro tema, otro tema mayor: la posesión, el sufrimiento que supone dejar de poseer aquello que se considera propio casi por derecho natural.

“A veces vislumbraba que, si me hubiera dicho bruscamente «la dejo y vuelvo contigo», una vez pasado el primer minuto de felicidad absoluta…me habría preguntado por qué había querido conseguir aquello.”

De hecho, ese sufrimiento es, en cierta manera, tan ajeno a la persona que lo provoca que se tiene la sensación de que en cualquier momento se podría terminar con él mediante un simple acto de voluntad.

“En ciertos momentos, cada vez más frecuentes, creía fugazmente que podría terminar con esa ocupación, romper el maleficio tan fácilmente como pasar de una habitación a otra…”

Siendo todo esto ya ciertamente perturbador, todavía falta la guinda del pastel: inseparable del dolor que ella sentía había una fuerza, cierta voluptuosidad por ese tormento. Tanto es así, que prefería vivir aquello a otros “momentos tranquilos y fructíferos” de su vida, su dolor “hacía que el mundo adquiriera un sentido”.

“Esa mujer me llenaba la cabeza, el pecho y el vientre, me acompañaba a todas partes, dictaba mis emociones. Al mismo tiempo, aquella presencia ininterrumpida me llevaba a vivir intensamente. Me provocaba sacudidas internas que nunca antes había conocido, desplegaba en mí una energía, una inventiva de la que jamás me habría creído capaz, me mantenía en una actividad febril y constante.”

P.S. No quiero terminar mi comentario sin hacer mención de un párrafo que muestra lo mucho que ha cambiado en estos últimos años la percepción que se tiene de la violencia pasional. Estoy seguro de que hoy en día se hubiera llevado más de una crítica por ello.

“Entendía por fin la benevolencia de los tribunales para con los llamados crímenes pasionales, su reticencia a aplicar la ley que exige que se castigue a un asesino, una ley fruto de la razón y de la necesidad de vivir en sociedad pero que choca con otra, visceral: querer suprimir a aquel o aquella que haya invadido el cuerpo y la mente de uno.”

[Pakinam Mahmoud · Rating 3 out of 5]

الأحتلال نوفيلا صغيرة عن امرأة كانت تشعر بغيرة غير عادية بعد أن أتخذ صديقها السابق -الذي تركته من فترة بكامل إرادتها-صديقة جديدة ...
الكتاب كله بتتكلم الكاتبة عن مشاعر هذه السيدة وإزاي كانت تري المرأة الأخري في كل مكان و تحاول أن تطردها من مخيلتها لدرجة إنها كانت تشعر إنها مملوكة و محتلة من قبل إمرأة لم تراها يوماً في حياتها!

إسلوب الكاتبة غريب الصراحة..السرد في كل كتبها اللي قرأتها ،يشبه إلي حد ما اليوميات..صحيح بتحس إن ما تكتبه حقيقي و كأنه فعلاً حصل لها ولكن مش قادرة أصنف أعمالها لحد هذه اللحظة علي إنها روايات...

القراءة الثالثة للكاتبة ..لسة بحاول أفهم إسلوبها و عندي إحساس إن كل كتبها مرتبطين ببعض بطريقة أو بأخري وكإنهم بيكملوا بعض بطريقة غير مباشرة بس محتاجة أقرأ لها أكتر عشان أشوف الصورة الكاملة...
التقييم ٢.٥

[Luna Miguel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Me muero, socia.

[Jan-Maat]

This is such an intensely personal book that it becomes impersonal.

I don't know if it is fiction, or a memoir, or auto-fiction and it doesn't matter. The narrator is taken over with jealousy towards an unknown woman. She think that she teaches at the university Paris-III, reading, I think, would you be more or less jealous if she was at Paris-II or Paris-IV instead! Doing so I collaborate in her mental state, which the incredible deeply personal effect of this story, there is no escape from her point of view until you turn the last page.

Once upon a time, the narrator was together with a man she refers to as W., she still contacts him on his mobile phone occasionally, sometimes at unsocial hours. We learn nothing about him or their relationship, possible in case he might read this book and be so vain that he thinks this book is about him. They meet once, she notes his glacial coldness. As it happened when I read that I was suffering from the heat which even in the mild mid-twenties, I find oppressive and a burden on my body, and so glacial coldness sounded delicious, the kind of thing that I'd want to take with me to have a long soak in the bath with. As far we can tell the narrator had no use, benefit, value, or pleasure from that relationship. There are children, but from previous relationships.

I was recommended this as a simple text in French. Grammatically it is bizarrely simplistic, though the vocabulary was a bit beyond me. The style supports, or emphasises her state of mind. The sentences are free standing, like her, we are in the instant. There is no need to search up and down thecpage to find the subject and object of a verb because that would break The conceit of us being together in the moment, the rage, the agony, the fevered thoughts that we go through.

The narrator begins by telling us that she'd like to write as if she were dead. An interesting thought. She ends her account by going to Venice, a place famous for literary deaths. Perhaps because like Bruges la morte, it was a dlourishing medieval commercial hub, but that was all long ago, and now it drifts on in the strange twlight half-light of tourism dependency- but then I have been reading Fernand Braudel recently.

Anyway the narrator was with W. Then they separated. Then W.began a relationship with a different woman, this event sends the narrator down a rabbit hole of jealousy. And if he had begun a relationship with a man, or withdrawn to live in a monastery, or decided to walk with his dog to Lhasa instead would that have been better? But this is the nature of the occupation of the narrator's mind which she imposes on us as readers. We never have any idea that being with W. Is better than being in a relationship with any other letter of the alphabet and the narrator's jealousy seems tp be more fundamental than that. Perhaps it is the fact of beginning a relationship, being in a relationship or being considered, even implicitly, desirable or attractive is the trigger, anyhow we go through 65 pages in largish type of how she suffers through this jealousy of a woman who she doesn't know but is compelled to think that she finds things out about. We never know if she actually teaches at Paris-III. We are just compelled as though by an occupying power to add two and two together and to come up with five repeatedly. Maybe she sees W.'s new woman once, but maybe she's mistaken. And it doesn't matter. What does matter is the intensity of experience that one person's writing makes us experience, it feels like we are in a bottomless pit , densely populated by monsters. Reason is long gone. There is only the narrative voice and the anguish that we have to share. We have to collaborate with her occupation.

Still, I have the feeling that Ernaux came across the woman destroyed and decided to write a more intense version of it.

[Roman Clodia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ce n'est plus mon désir, ma jalousie, qui sont dans ces pages, c'est du désir, de la jalousie.

It is no longer my desire, my jealousy which is in these pages, it's desire, jealousy.

For all its brevity, Ernaux's meditation on jealousy when her lover leaves her for another woman is both intense and also coolly analytical. The narrator inhabits the body and consciousness of the jealous subject and yet is also watching 'her', her writer's brain fascinated by the psychological disruption and dislocation that has a rational woman descend into a fevered craziness that is eminently recognisable.

That 'l'occupation' of the title figures both the feeling of possession, of having been overtaken by an obsession from outside onself, but also the 'occupation' of the writer who views emotional turmoil as prime material for copy - confession, performance and spectacle all rolled up into one blazing, searing, self-conscious text.

[Harun Ahmed · Rating 4 out of 5]

"ঈর্ষা সম্বন্ধে সবচেয়ে আশ্চর্য ব্যাপার হচ্ছে যে তা পূর্ণ করে ফেলতে পারে পুরো একটা শহর - সমগ্র পৃথিবী - এমন এক ব্যক্তির সাথে যার সঙ্গে তোমার হয়তো কখনো দেখাই হয়নি।"

নিউ ইয়র্ক টাইমস বুক রিভিউ আনি এর্নো'র গদ্যকে "stripped down prose" বলে অভিহিত করেছে। the possession পড়তে যেয়ে সেটার সত্যতা টের পেলাম। প্রেমিকের সাথে ছাড়াছাড়ি হয়ে গেছে। এর্নো হঠাৎ জানতে পারলেন তার প্রাক্তনের সাথে এক মহিলার সম্পর্কের কথা। সেই অদেখা বয়স্কা নারীই হয়ে উঠলো কথকের মনোযোগের কেন্দ্রবিন্দু। দিনে রাতে শয়নে জাগরণে সেই মহিলা দখল করে নিলো তার অস্তিত্ব। প্রাক্তনের প্রতি ভালোবাসা, নিজের নিঃসঙ্গতা, প্রাক্তনের প্রেমিকার প্রতি সর্বব্যাপী ঈর্ষা আর তা থেকে মুক্তির গল্প the possession। চূড়ান্ত নিরাবেগ অথচ স্নায়ুক্ষয়ী গদ্যে এর্নো এমন এক গল্প বলেছেন যা লিখতে প্রয়োজন নির্মম সততার। এ যেন সবার সামনে নগ্ন হয়ে দাঁড়ানো!! এর্নোর সাফল্য নিহিত আছে নিজের গল্পকে সার্বজনীন করে তুলতে পারার অনায়াস দক্ষতায়।

(১৩ জুন, ২০২৩)

[Lucinda Garza Zamarripa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lo acabé de una sentada.

Es mi décimo libro de Ernaux, y me sigue sorprendiendo y sacudiendo su honestidad tan BRUTAL. Su manera de decir así, a secas y sin miedo, cosas que a muchas nos avergonzaría y mortificaría decir en voz alta.

(Annie Ernaux es definitivamente la Santa Patrona de nosotras las ganchadas y las intensitas).

[Heba]

امرأة تغادر حبيبها بمطلق إرادتها وها هي تتمتع بحريتها القصوى ولقد اتخذ لنفسه صديقة جديدة...وبعد؟...
هنا تنغرس أوتاد الاحتلال بكيانها ..أي احتلال ؟؟
لقد أصبحت "محتلة" من غريمتها والتي لم تتعرف على هويتها ...فما أقسى هذا النوع من الاحتلال ..وما يستدعي السخرية بأنها تلك المرأة تجهل أنها تجتاح حياة امرأة مجهولة لها ....سلبتها كينونتها وأحالتها إلى كائن هش..فارغ ولكن يرزح تحت ثقل الانفعالات المكبوتة والأحاسيس المدمرة للذات...
حاصرتها تلك المرأة في كل الأمكنة التي ترتادها ، غزت كل الأوقات التي كانت تتلمس فيها الهدنة من عذاباتها...
اخترقت مخيلتها كسهم لا يمكنها ان تتنتزعه بسهولة...
تتوقف عند الهوس المحموم الذي استولى على تلك المرأة برغبتها الجارفة للتعرف على هوية صديقة رفيقها السابق...
تجترأ الذكريات متشبثة بظلالها الشبحية ...تسلم لسلطة هى من اختلقتها وفرضتها على نفسها...
ألن تحن لحظة تكسر الأصفاد التي تكبلها ..وتعلن حريتها ؟
أنني أؤمن بأنه طالما نعجز على أن نمنح لحظاتنا عنواناً..إذن هى وهم يطمس وجودنا الحقيقي..يسلمنا للتصدع أو الأفول...
ها هى قد لجأت للكتابة كوظيفة استشفائية ، والتى ما أن نمارسها حتى يمكننا عندئذٍ مواجهة الفوضى العارمة التي تعتمل بداخلنا وتصبح كل الأحاسيس المجردة..كلمات ملموسة كالمرآة تعكس حقيقة ما نحن عليه...
وأخيراً...للأسف جاءت هنا كلمات حادة جريئة لربما فى محاولة مندفعة غير محسوبة لنيل الحرية.....😏

[Helga · Rating 3 out of 5]

The strangest thing about jealousy is that it can populate an entire city—the whole world—with a person you may never have met.

In The Possession, Ernaux talks about a period in her life when she finds out that her ex-lover is with another woman.
She describes her sensations, her madness, desires and actions at the time and her obsession with this ‘other woman’ and her jealousy towards her.

I was being inhabited by a woman I had never seen.

[Momčilo Žunić · Rating 3 out of 5]

Zalog pisanja je prikraćenost, osujećenost, nezadovolj(e)nost, egzistencijalni rashod ili, kako je to otprilike i kraće sa stanovitom ironijom sročio jedan domaći romansijer, ili si srećan ili imaš da ispričaš priču. Ponešto od toga upri(li)čava se ovde, osim što su u pitanju osobiti hiroviti manjkovi - zar nisu uvek su osobiti manjkovi, kako je utvrdio drugi jedan romanozemac - samim tim i izvorišta narativa. Reći će se ovde da se iz seksualnog zadovoljstva ne piše, te da odatle proizilaze jedino pronicljivost i naglo pojednostavljena vizija sveta. Piše se, prema tome, iz konkretnog gubitka za koji se autorka više ne može oklembesiti - da, mislim na kurac!- i konkretizovanog osećaja sopstvene neposebnosti - da, svi smo već viđeni, svi potpadamo pod određeni tip ma koliko uobražavali povlašćenost - kao i zamenljivosti:" Bila sam skvot jedne žene koju nikad nisam videla."

Osećanje zaposednutosti temporalno obavezuje. Pisati se može tek kada nastupi "završeno vreme". Do tada se opsesija intenzivno proživljava kao okupiranost inteligencije koja iskopavajući sebi rupu preti da sa sobom u nju strmoglavi čitavu stvarnost. Stega osećanja, paranoidni poligon za preobražavanje, sve vreme je utisnuta u visceralno; štaviše, s njim je srasla. Otud Erno sporadično ukazuje na telesnost koja će sa utihnućem prezentnosti emocije izložiti smireno-staloženom skalpelu.[Pripovedni zahvat kakvim mi se sa ovom distancom čini i onaj upoznat u "Jednostavnoj strasti".]

Otud se i suština pisanja Ani Erno očitava u vidljivosti sebe i sopstvene patnje, što je druga(čija) oznaka za osobitost slučaja. Odatle, iz autobiografske činjenice (sic!), sledi poopštavanje. A poopštavanje je zajedništvo  u tome da smo svi načeti strašću pa svi imamo priču za pričanje. Budući da to uglavnom ne znamo, prepoznaćemo se u tuđoj. Ovdašnjoj.

Narativna (auto)disekcija - tačnije autopsija sebe u osećanju - pretpostavlja i to da će se napisano vremenom otrcati: "Čak i one najizanđalije metafore, pre nego što ih je sročio, neko je morao prvo da oseti na sebi.". Čime se, utisak je, paradoksalno ograničava sopstveni domašaj, dok, s druge strane, izostaje i katarza. Ona dejstvuje, kaže se i to, samo na one koje nije načela strast. Ima li ih?! Za onu koja piše preostaje još samo da se intenzivni trenuci okušaju kroz pisanje:
"Pisanje je u suštini ljubomora na stvarnost. Ja pišem ljubomoru kao što sam je živela."

Tako nekako. U iščekivanju naleta sledećih. Neminovni(ji)h.

[Yara Yu · Rating 3 out of 5]

لا يوجد أسوء من امرأة أنانية وغيورة علي ما لا حق لها فيه
في أقل من ٧٠ صفحة تحكي الكاتبه عن الغيرة اللامنطقية لامرأة تركت حبيبها وعندما أحب امرأة أخري احتلها شعور الغيرة وأصبحت تبحث عن المرأة في كل مكان
الرواية كانت تحتاج أن تكون أطول من ذلك وذكرتني بأعمال ستيفان زفايج
وكان تقيميها سيكون أعلي لولا الترجمة السيئة جدا

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ernaux Season. Day 5.

Annie Ernaux has much to feel grateful for, not the least of which is the fact that social media did not exist when she was consumed in these passions. I remember some wild early social media platform choices. For instance, Snapchat would previously show the top 3 accounts that you were in touch with. Instagram would show recent activities, including who liked what post, started following whom, basically everything that should be private. The mind games were unbelievable. I was out there battling in the wild wild west myself - I was a teenager, it’s excusable. Don’t respond to her when you’re angry, but go ahead and like a few things on Instagram so she sees how petty you’re being. I also caught some bullets, finding out that girls I had been talking to had certain dreaded characters on their top friend lists on Snap… does this all sound exhausting? Yes? Good. Because it fucking was.

Nowadays, I don’t do any of that. I feel as though I stepped out of the matrix of the games, the possession, the need to know everything at all times. As if me knowing where she is, what she is doing, what she is thinking, which restaurant she is ordering at, what time she is ordering the Uber… is going to change anything. As if it will give me any control over the situation, or allow me to live in peace. Possession. It’s not merely being possessed by the seduction of another person, but also by the cycle of modern attraction. The jealousies and insecurities we all share, fuelled by an ever-present sea of information, accessible 24/7, 365 days a year. Recently, an old flame sent me a text (I hate that I said “old flame”, but there is also incredible power in it - I said it and Fortunate Son by Creedence Clearwater Revival started playing in the background). She was in town and wanted to meet up. Problem is this: she knew my schedule. She knew I was busy at this and that exact time, and decided to “make herself available” just at those times (and only at those times). Listen - the world doesn’t revolve around me, so I get it if those are truly the only times you are available. But really? Down to the minute? Having known I was caught up? How do you read this situation? Here is how I read it: “I actually do want to meet up, but at the very same time, I want you to know that I could just as easily pull the rug out from under your feet. I set the parameters, I dictate the rules, me. ME. Coming out and just proposing that we meet up like a couple of adults is too vulnerable, it’s showing too much of myself, too exposed. I need control of this situation. Now, show me that I win by running around, trying to get out of previous commitments in order to appease me, choosing me over your other work, showing me that I deserve it and that you have no self-respect. Validate my existence.” How did I do? There is only one problem: read the first sentence of this paragraph. My “love game katana” is sharpened, but I never use it. I texted back something to the effect of “Oh well! All good. Hope you enjoy your visit.” Suddenly, her weekend “freed up”, magically. Oh, would you look at that! But I’m good. I’ll just chill. Jumping back into that pool is, I think, no better than relapsing when you’re several years sober.

In order to not be possessed, some conscious effort is needed. I talk to people from all walks of life, most of them believing that something is innately wrong with them, deep down, if they cannot get over this game of possession. I don’t know if that’s the case at all. That makes about as much sense as blaming a 3-year-old for not knowing how to read. It’s an exercise in learning, discipline, and application. Certainly, choosing to be a bit more guarded with respect to the games of possession is more difficult to do. The headrush you get when you give yourself to the cycle with reckless abandon is almost as good as the final result. But the price you have to pay is the erosion of your skills of long-term intimacy. So wouldn’t it be better not to scroll down to the bottom of her multi-thousand-post Instagram page when you meet her? Why do you need to comb the past for signs that will shake your present and ruin your future? Let it be.

Quote:

“For the first time, I could clearly perceive the material nature of feelings and emotions - I physically felt their consistency, their form but also their independence, their perfect freedom with respect to my consciousness. These interior states had their equivalent in nature: the surge of a wave, the crumbling of a cliff, sinkholes, algae blooms. I understood the necessity of comparisons and metaphors using water and fire. Even the most overused of them had first been lived, one day, by someone.”

“The strangest thing about jealousy is that it can populate an entire city - the whole world - with a person you may never have met.”

“The act of writing, here, is perhaps not so different from that of sticking needles.”

“Without a doubt the greatest suffering, like the greatest happiness, comes from the Other. I understand that some people fear this and try hard to avoid it by loving moderation, by favoring a match made of common interests, music, political engagement, a house with a garden, etc.; or with multiple sexual partners who are seen as objects of pleasure separate from the rest of life. And yet, if my suffering seemed absurd to me – outrageous, even, when compared to others both physical and social – if it seemed a luxury, I still preferred it to certain calm and productive periods in my life.”

“The only thing that was true, and I never said it to him, was ‘I want to fuck you and make you forget the other woman.’ All the rest was, literally, fiction.”

[Uzma Ali · Rating 5 out of 5]

New favorite author unlocked and insane woman representation secured. Annie Ernaux writes jealousy like she took the words out of my head. I feel insane. I wonder how 2001 Ernaux would fare in 2025, where access to the “other woman” is so stupidly easy you could get lost in undiscovered depths of her rabbit hole. She’d be insane. I am insane.

Jealousy is this novella. Ernaux writes of the other woman with whom her ex-husband cavorts, more than the ex-husband himself. She seems more entranced by loss than what it is she lost, you know? She had something, now someone else has it…therefore this woman has overtaken her mind. A possession by she who possesses what she once did. Does that make any sense or do I sound pretentious and deluded? Don’t answer that! I’d imagine those afflicted by possession get it, an affliction that seems to affect women more than men, but maybe I’ve been spending too much time in the digital gender wars. Speaking of which, I can imagine the type of person that reads this and revokes Ernaux’s “girl’s girl” title. Oh that’s so funny. I hate being online. Sorry

But what an unintentional romp this was! Escaping from the imagined thickets of jealousy gets you thinking how silly your violence was. Luckily, I’ve healed; luckily, the antidote really is time (although I relapse every now and again). Ernaux wrote something funny, which first should note how self-aware her memoirs are, that she is not embarassed to share emotions she once had, seeing them distant from herself. To quote, she writes not of her jealousy, but of jealousy. And I relate SORRY I RELATE (not to say that my work was ever close to Ernaux’s but I RELATE). People online would commend me for being so vulnerable as if my emotions weren’t available to anyone ever. They are not mine, they could be anyone’s. I found them banal. Yet this sentiment, which I also relate to (I’m saying “relate” a lot), is in direct contrast with the novella’s opening paragraph: “I have always wanted to write as if I would be gone when the book was published…no more judges.” She’s so funny. I also want that. But I also don’t.

Whatever. I want to use the word unequivocal because how else can I describe such honesty in her sharing “shameful” parts of herself. It is through the shame that we find truth or something like that. And I’m working on it. Always a pleasure to find an author who seems to be saying exactly what you were about to, so I will be reading more Ernaux. I’m pretty happy.

[Uroš Đurković · Rating 4 out of 5]

Elegantna i britka autoanatomija ljubomore za neke duhove može predstavljati ropstvo, a za neke injekciju otrežnjenja, iako ni recepta, ni razrešenja nema, osim ako ne zavirimo u ono iza teksta – u to da ovo i nije knjiga samo o izbezumljujućoj opsednutosti drugim bićem, već o zaposednutosti kao vrhunskom književnom modusu, neophodnom pripovednom gorivu. Najistinitije pisanje je sveprožimajuća opsesija – lov na značenje koji se može ispoljiti, kako se i u delu ističe, kroz književnost, religiju i paranoju. Pisanje stoga predstavlja „ljubomoru realnog” – odnosno, želju da se projekcija onog nedostajućeg i sama priča izravnaju.

Erno začuđujuće dobro zvuči na engleskom, deluje mi da je ton pogođen, iako mi, naravno, neke finese sigurno beže.

I kao u „Jednostavnoj strasti” ovo je jedna od onih knjiga koje se ili čitaju u jednom cugu, ili se uopšte ne pročitaju. Iz radoznalosti sam provirio, u pauzi od drugih čitanja i hop! delo je pročitano.

Jedna osoba koju izuzetno cenim rekla je nakon čitanja „Zaposednutosti” da bi ona mogla bolje da napiše. Imajući u vidu ko je u pitanju, ta mogućnost, makar i sasvim nerealna, raduje me. Ipak, bez obzira na utiske, jedno je sigurno – Erno je majstor jezičke ekonomije: sve je sažeto, prozirno, a gusto; sve je plod napornog i nezavršivog procesa sažimanja, odstranjivanja suvišnog. 

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The strangest thing about jealousy is that it can populate an entire city - the whole world - with a person you may never have met."

Annie Ernaux is on my list of authors to try, and when Seven Stories Press had a sale last year I bought The Years plus a few slim novels that are more like individual short stories. This is a short one about the narrator's obsession over her lover's new woman. Basically she left her longterm relationship to be with him, but then was hesitant to settle down right away, so he went in another direction. So she doesn't want him, but it drives her crazy that this other woman is closer than she is. It's more like the jealousy is of the thing she doesn't want, which tracks.

[Aleksandra Fatic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ja ovu ženu obožavam, tako jednostavno, a tako efektno, tako za čistih 5⭐️!

[عبدالله ناصر · Rating 5 out of 5]

ربما يعترض البعض على العنوان قليلاً أو حتى كثيراً ، فالأخت مي مثلاً تعتقد أن العنوان الأمثل هو الغيرة بينما أختلف معها قليلاً و مع أرنو المؤلفة إذ أرى أن الاستحواذ يلائم الرواية تماماً. و من المؤكد أن لا يروق للبعض استطراداتها الخليعة أحياناً فهي لا تتورع عن أي مفردة بذيئة و مع ذلك فقد أغرمت كثيراً بالنوفيلا - لا أرى أنها رواية و حتماً ليست بقصة قصيرة - .

المرأة التي تخلت عن شريكها بعد سنوات عن رضا و قناعة تامّتين جنّ جنونها ما إن تناهى إلى سمعها أن رفيقها القديم و الذي تحتفط معه بعلاقة باردة بات يمتلك رفيقةً أخرى . تتجاهل هذا الشعور الأحمق و الذي و لا يليق بها فقد انتهى كل شيء و لكنها لا تستطيع . الفكرة بسيطة و ليس ثمة غموض بالمحتوى و الأسلوب غير أن الكاتبة تكتب بحدّة وعي يندر وجودها . إن كل مقطع صغير هو عبارة عن كتل لا نهائية من الجنون و الوعي و الحمق أيضاً. بعد أي مكالمة هاتفية معه تستعيد الحوار و تقول :

" كانت تلك الجُمل التي لم أكن أعيرها انتباهاً في البداية تعود إليّ ليلاً لتنهشني فجأة. لقد أصبحت مهمة التبادل والتخاطب التي نعطيها عادةً للغة في المرتبة الثانية ، إذ حلت مكانها إما أن تعني و إما ألا تعني حبه لها أم حبه لي " .

احتجت إلى بضعة صفحات حتى يُحسم الأمر على طريقة سيد درويش : " أنا هويت و انتهيت " .

[Maja]

Ne rešavam se da zauzmem konačan stav. Volim kada autor napiše tačno onoliko koliko smatra da treba i ne produžava iz ljubavi prema svom izdavaču - sa tog aspekta, knjiga počinje, bavi se i završava autorkinim stanjem opsesije rođene iz ljubomore. A ipak, iako lična i emotivna, prizivanje odjeka prišlih patnji je maksimum što ova ispovest može da učini za svog citaoca. Kao da me je provela kroz poznate mi ulice grada, ali nigde se nije zadržala da mi malo bliže predstavi istoriju lokacija oko nas. Kraće rečeno, ostavila me je da želim mnogo, mnogo više...

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am reading and reviewing quickly a series of short works by Annie Ernaux. Memoir? Autofiction? I had just read Simple Passion about being possessed by all of the emotions Ernaux experiences as a young woman in a two-year affair with a married man; Possession continues the theme, only focused on post-relationship (another, different relationship than the one described in Simple Passion) jealousy. Both experiences she describes in these short books are debilitating, crazy-making, self-defeating in so many ways. So Simple Passion is about the all-consuming experience of desire; Possession is about the all-consuming experience of jealousy.

"The strangest thing about jealousy is that it can populate an entire city - the whole world - with a person you may never have met."

The guy Ernaux is seeing begins seeing another woman, and Ernaux ends the relationship, but then can’t stop thinking of the woman who has in some sense “replaced” her.

“In the self-erasure that is the state of jealousy, which transforms every difference into a lack, it was not only my body, my face, that were devalued but also my occupation – my entire being.”

Many women describe these books as capturing these experiences from a female perspective, and I am sure this is true, but I can say I could relate to them very easily as a man. I know very well the emotions she describes, acknowledging that societally there my be or certainly have been different stakes in these experiences for men than women. But importantly, Ernaux is looking back half a century at her young self, in a different time.

[فهد الفهد · Rating 3 out of 5]

الاحتلال

رواية فرنسية قصيرة لا تتجاوز الخمسين صفحة، قراءتي الأولى لآني إرنو، ورغم هذا القصر الشديد، ورغم الترجمة المتواضعة، إلا أنها رواية مكثفة، ومركزة على احتلال افتراضي يحدث لامرأة من قبل امرأة أخرى لا تعرفها، لا تعرف شكلها أو اسمها، لا تعرف إلا أنها تعاشر طليقها، هل يمكننا تسمية شعور الغيرة هذا الذي يبدو لنا مألوفاً جداً، بل تجربة حياتية، لا نحتاج فيها إلى يد تأخذنا، ولا إلى جهد لتصور انفجاراتها وعواصفها، هل يمكننا تسمية ذلك بالاحتلال؟ لا تبدو المرأة الأخرى محتلة، صحيح أنها أخذت مكانها، ولكنها للحقيقة حصلت على المكان بعد خلوه، كما أننا نلاحظ أن العلاقة بين البطلة وطليقها تبدو ممتازة وغير مقطوعة، وليس فيها تلك المرارة اللعينة التي تميز العلاقات المبتورة، إن الأمر إذن ليس حال احتلال، هي حالة استسلام، ليس هناك فاتح ولكن هناك خائن ترك الأبواب مشرعة، لتدخل منها كل المشاعر غير المرغوبة، ولهذا نلاحظ أنها عندما توقفت عن التفكير بالأمر، وقطعت علاقتها بطليقها، خرجت تلك المرأة من ذهنها ومشاعرها وكأنها لم تكن، مشاعر الإنسان – إن سمح لي تشارلز بوكوفسكي – ليست إلا كلباً من الجحيم يعضه في كل حين، أما الآخرون فليسوا إلا صور ذهنية مبالغ بها، مبالغ بها بما لا يقاس.

[Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

La plaquette m’a semblé bien mince, tant au littéral qu’au figuré. Il faut dire que l’obsession, de par sa nature, commande un regard assez étroit sur les choses. En l'espèce, madame a été larguée et n’en termine plus d’imaginer sa rivale. En soixante-dix pages à peine, l’esprit s’est très peu promené, ni le mien, ni celui d’Ernaux.

Rédiger ces quelques dizaines de pages a sans doute fait du bien à l’autrice: nous sommes en présence d’une écriture thérapeutique, à la façon d’un long épisode dans un journal intime. En ce qui me concerne, je reste un peu sur ma faim.

[Martyna Antonina · Rating 4 out of 5]

4,25 ☆

Ernaux ma katartyczną zdolność do wiwisekcji. Jest równocześnie pisaną i piszącą, czułą i mięsistą. Potrafi uderzyć mnie w twarz zdaniami, które odrętwiają ją z pola myślenia ('To write is, first of all, not to be seen'!). Obnażać wstyd z tak radykalną wrażliwością - kto to widział? kto czytał gdzieś indziej? Całe jej pisanie stanowi rytm wpłów i wynurzeń na zewnątrz. Tak przedziwnie otwierającej prozy gęsich skórek szukam. Coś masochistycznie kojącego. Jeszcze nie wiem dlaczego, ani dla kogo - ale polecam.

[Jillian B · Rating 4 out of 5]

This intriguing little book recounts the narrator’s all-consuming obsession with her ex’s new partner. What’s interesting (and perhaps relatable) about this story is that she’s not particularly enamoured with the man in question, but in seeing how she stacks up against the woman who “replaced” her. Ernaux’s straightforward, almost sparse, writing style is an effective vehicle for conveying thought-provoking and complex ideas. The vibe is pure understated French glamour. I will definitely be checking out more of her writing!

[Henk · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I don’t know what I want to read I turn to Ernaux to transport me with complete frankness to episodes of her life and insights into what it means to be human. This book is a bit light but captures the temporary insanity of romantic jealousy expertly
The strangest thing about jealousy is that it can populate an entire city, the whole world, with a person you may never have met.

The other woman is such a loaded term that it is impressive how dispassionate Annie Ernaux can depict her transition from the new to the old. Depicting a breakdown of an affair with W, in his 30s, we get frank observations on what it means to be jealous and in the end to move on (De facto catharsis only benefits those that are untouched by passion).
Thinking of Anna Karenina comes back and there is a mourning of a past self which is eloquent.
The Possession is in my view a bit light in emotional impact, even though it is characteristically frank about sexual desire and documenting “unworthy” thoughts, but still it got me out of my reading paralysis and transported me utterly for a hour.

[María Greene F · Rating 4 out of 5]

Uf, la ocupación. Yo también la he vivido. Cuando uno se separa de alguien que ha sido querido y sabe ya de quien será... LA SIGUIENTE. Ni siquiera importa si el quiebre amoroso fue terminado por uno misma, la obsesión inicial es grande y es como si la ciudad entera fuera una propagación de las huellas de... LA OTRA, jajaja. Es algo muy instintivo, muy animal, o al menos así también me ha pasado a mí... vivir esa sensación interna que racionalmente ni siquiera es útil, para nadie. Y cuando esa mujer siguiente - u hombre, uno nunca sabe - es desconocida es todavía peor, porque al no tener nombre ni identidad usa todos los espacios. O sea, pobre autora que esto le pasó antes de los tiempos del internet, jejeje, porque entonces "aliviarse" debe haber significado magno trabajo de investigación.

Lo disfruté harto, y además me dio un poco de envidia, qué rico poder escribir de las propias vivencias sin autocensurarse y dejando que los lectores se beneficien de ello. Porque la historia de alguien es la historia de muchos y uno aprende cosas y se acompaña.

Después supe que ella se ganó un Nobel el 2022 y lo entiendo, tiene esa pluma íntima y bien descrita que es como un paraje directo a todas las identidades. Aunque hay otras Nobel que me han gustado más, hasta ahora, como Doris Lessing.

[Karla Acuña · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow siento que me gusta demasiado

[Jolanta (knygupė) · Rating 4 out of 5]

3,8
Šių metų Nobelio prizo laureatės elegantiška psichologinė apysaka apie visagalį pavydą.

[Anaïs Ornelas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Annie Ernaux conoce los pensamientos más twisted que has tenido y no le da miedo repetirtelos