{"id":135214,"date":"2025-10-21T03:30:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T03:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/135214\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T03:30:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T03:30:08","slug":"the-other-girl-by-annie-ernaux-review-griefs-rippling-effects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/135214\/","title":{"rendered":"The Other Girl by Annie Ernaux review \u2013 grief’s rippling effects"},"content":{"rendered":"

Annie Ernaux\u2019s The Other Girl <\/strong>might be the latest of the Nobel Prize-winning author\u2019s works to be published by Fitzcarraldo, but it is far from her most recent. The Other Girl, translated into English for the first time by Alison L Strayer, was first published in French in 2011. <\/p>\n

It is a letter to Ernaux\u2019s dead sister, whose life and tragic death was a poorly kept secret by Erneaux\u2019s parents; one which she discovered by overhearing a conversation between her mother and a relative stranger. In some ways The Other Girl is reminiscent of Maggie Nelson\u2019s The Red Parts, as it shares a curiosity for family members that the author never knew, while demonstrating grief<\/a>\u2019s rippling effects.\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ernaux, with her carefully selected words, questions whether her sister, who family members have portrayed as a perfect child, was actually as glowing as those alive insist she was. There is a dark wit to Ernaux\u2019s assessment as she notes that in every photo of her sister, she presents dejected expressions to the camera.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The brief piece of work, both poignant and personal \u2013 as is Ernaux\u2019s oeuvre \u2013 asks why we insist on remembering the dead in such a positive light, what purpose is served by comparing a living child to a dead one and how living in the shadow of grief affected Ernaux\u2019s understanding of herself.\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Other Girl<\/a> by\u202fAnnie Ernaux\u202f, translated by Alison L Strayer\u00a0 is out now (Fitzcarraldo, \u00a38.99).\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Y<\/strong>ou can buy it from the\u00a0<\/b>Big Issue shop<\/a>\u00a0on bookshop.org, which helps to support Big Issue and independent bookshops.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Annie Ernaux\u2019s The Other Girl might be the latest of the Nobel Prize-winning author\u2019s works to be published…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":135215,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[266],"tags":[359,18,117,1652,8420,20012,19,17,13186,1142],"class_list":{"0":"post-135214","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-family","12":"tag-from-the-magazine","13":"tag-grief","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland","16":"tag-memoir","17":"tag-review"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135214\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}