LOTE
There is so much to think and feel, as we follow Mathilda from an unpaid role in a national archive (where she steals ignored photographs of ignored black artists and writers from the 1920s), to an acerbically described pseudo-communist cult somewhere in central Europe, as she investigates the black modernist Hermia Druitt, who had moved in the same circles as the Bright Young People (whom she adores). She both pursues a life of pleasure and escape, on one level (via secret societies and substances), and the methodical reinstatement of this obscured black artist.
Christiana Spens reviews Shola von Reinhold‘s LOTE.
Me, Myself & I: On Annie Ernaux’s A Girl’s Story
The consequence is a layered reading experience, in which Ernaux seems at times to be addressing herself rather than the reader, if only to draw us deeper, its effect like that of a secret shared or overheard. In this diligent attempt to convey her own truth is evidence also of the author’s acute sensitivity to her own role, for the responsibility that comes with having the power to shape her own narrative, and its implications for women more broadly.
Daniel Baksi reviews A Girl’s Story by Annie Ernaux.