A small, powerful, and overwritten memoir of a mother's slow
deterioration and death in a nursing home. Ernaux is a prize
winning author (A Man's Place, 1992, also translated by Leslie)
whose mother had been strict, controlling, but loving. When her
aging, widowed mother first fell ill, Emaux took her home. However,
as her mother's senility turned into mind-wasting Alzheimer's
disease, the author had her placed in an old-age home, where she
visited and wrote this journal. This emotionally charged scenario
has been handled before, notably in Rodger Kamenetz's Terra Infirma
(1998). Erneaux's memoir is at its most effecting when describing
details, such as her mother losing her glasses, dentures, modesty,
posture, and possessiveness - rather than telling us she's losing
her mind and body. Too often, however, poignant scenes are dampened
by the memoirist's insistence on spelling things out. She precedes
the heartbreaking realization that her mother "thinks that I have
come to take her away and that she is going to leave this place"
with the neon signs indicating that "it's beyond sadness" and
promising "painful moments." Her disheveled mother is soiled with
excrement, has to be spoon-fed, her right hand "grasping the left
like an unknown object," yet Ernaux remarks: "I have no idea what
she thought of sex or how she made love." The author is either in
deep trouble or is French. Readers of all nationalities will
sympathize with Emaux's having to be her mother's mother, the good
and bad memories of her girlhood evoked by these horrific scenes
and emotions, and her tortured feelings of guilt in moments when
she hates this former provider for draining her so. The pain
doesn't ease at journal's end, when Emaux's mother abruptly passes
away. The impact of this courageous, sometimes unsubtle little book
is sure to not pass away quickly. (Kirkus Reviews)
An extraordinary evocation of a grown daughter's attachment to her
mother, and of both women's strength and resiliency. "I Remain in
Darkness" recounts Annie's attempts first to help her mother
recover from Alzheimer's disease, and then, when that proves
futile, to bear witness to the older woman's gradual decline and
her own experience as a daughter losing a beloved parent. "I Remain
in Darkness" is a new high water mark for Ernaux, surging with raw
emotional power and her sublime ability to use language to
apprehend her own life's particular music.
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