Cleaned Out (French Literature Series) [Paperback]

Annie Ernaux (Author), Carol Sanders (Translator, Afterword)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

With extraordinary voice and poignant bravery, this novel allows the reader to experience a 20-year-old woman's reflections as she lies suffering from a back-alley abortion. Denise Lesur, alone in her college dorm room, reviews her coming-of-age in postwar France and her passages in life from a middle-class upbringing to what may be her last day--a brilliant treatment of coming to terms with one's childhood by one of France's most important and innovative contemporary writers.

From Publishers Weekly

"So I got involved, heavily involved, deeply involved, right down to ending up with a tube in my womb, all because of a not-very-clever comment, all because of myself." In this first novel, written in 1974, the Prix Renaudot-winning author's narrator is a 20-year-old college student who lies pondering the childhood that brought her bleeding and alone to her dorm room following a back-alley abortion. But Ernaux has no bent for bathos: for her the abortion serves as a metaphorical rather than moral backdrop against which Denise Lesur, the not particularly lovable heroine, recounts the events of a life that closely parallels Ernaux's own. Denise is the petted only child of small shopkeepers who slave to keep her in a private Catholic school, where she discovers a "finer" existence and turns away from her parents, working to expunge their traces from her speech, her clothes, her ambitions and herself. Cleaned Out is a tough story of young girl's coming-of-agestet hyphens per Web. in postwar France, a story filled with the spirit of Elvis, Sartre, jazz and the nasty little verities of adolescence.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 127 pages
• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press; 2 edition (September 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1564781399
• ISBN-13: 978-1564781390
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,015,951 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Couldn't put it down, July 22, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Northern California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cleaned Out (French Literature Series) (Paperback)

This book left me with a chilling feeling... the description is superb and the tales are often painful and often humorous, a voice we don't often get to read. Definitely recommend it!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My favorite book..., February 5, 2002

By 

jlbremer (Madison, WI United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cleaned Out (French Literature Series) (Paperback)

Ernaux writes in an amazingly real, raw, "in your face" style which is not for the faint of heart...this is what draws me to her works. Ernaux's descriptions utilize all of one's senses, making you feel truly part of the story. Her description of the main character in the book, with all of her flaws and charms, is extrememly rich. This book is an exploration of gender and class, and about the inner dialogue of a woman trying to figure out who she is and where she fits in life.

4.0 out of 5 stars effortlessly stylized, March 4, 2004

By 

lady detective "sakura kitty" (east coat) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cleaned Out (French Literature Series) (Paperback)

Typically, stream-of-consciousness type fiction picks at my nerves, but Ernaux's version of this style stays largely connecte. You aren't forced to jump around within the narrator's mind, instead the thoughts meld together in a pattern fairly easy to understand.

Her memories (I've read that this is largely autobiographical) of school & her parents shop, are absorbing & powerful- her blatant admittance of shame regarding the juxtopositon between life at home & life at school (the extreme difference in class status)- is brave as well as cringeworthy.

I admire Ernaux's ability to create a character that is in many ways unlikeable, yet at the same time understandable. She does an amazing job getting into the confused mind of a growing girl & the hypocritical shameful thoughts one is prone to at that age.

It was wonderful to read a not quite coming of age story set in France- the only reason it escapes the 5 star rating was due my boredom with the narrator's sexcapades- certainly a large chunk of a teenaged girls fixation in life- but I just didn't care that much about her 'redheaded boy'.

Recommended!