{"id":87952,"date":"2025-10-21T03:17:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T03:17:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/87952\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T03:17:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T03:17:07","slug":"the-other-girl-by-annie-ernaux-review-griefs-rippling-effects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/87952\/","title":{"rendered":"The Other Girl by Annie Ernaux review \u2013 grief&#8217;s rippling effects"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Annie Ernaux\u2019s The Other Girl 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<p>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 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bigissue.com\/opinion\/teach-children-grief-childhood-school-guidance\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">grief<\/a>\u2019s rippling effects.\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>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<p>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<p><a href=\"https:\/\/uk.bookshop.org\/a\/9500\/9781804271841\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\" noreferrer noopener nofollow\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"327\" height=\"500\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1689-Books_Review_Drop_in_02.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-276838\" style=\"width:115px;height:auto\"  \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/uk.bookshop.org\/a\/9500\/9781804271841\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">The Other Girl<\/a> by\u202fAnnie Ernaux\u202f, translated by Alison L Strayer\u00a0 is out now (Fitzcarraldo, \u00a38.99).\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>You can buy it from the\u00a0<a style=\"font-weight: bold;\" href=\"https:\/\/uk.bookshop.org\/shop\/Bigissue\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Big Issue shop<\/a>\u00a0on bookshop.org, which helps to support Big Issue and independent bookshops.<\/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&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87953,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[412,146,501,40074,3898,85,46,14218,1529],"class_list":{"0":"post-87952","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-family","11":"tag-from-the-magazine","12":"tag-grief","13":"tag-il","14":"tag-israel","15":"tag-memoir","16":"tag-review"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87952\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}