Childhood

One of my literature classes this semester is on the theme of childhood. So we have to read a book that could not be more appropriate: Childhood. It is an autobiographical story by Nathalie Sarraute, in which she tries to remember the first 11 years of her life.

I had already discovered her talent to illustrate what impact a wrong word, a hesitation, a silence, can have on a conversation in her play For No Good Reason. It happens all the time when we're adults. Imagine what happens when you add to that a child's brain and decades of distance. With the help of an interlocutor who (I just discovered) is her own voice, Sarraute attempts to consciously bring back memories that often appear without warning, without context, highly emotionally charged, and to ask: did this really happen?

Impressions

It may show in my tone, I don't quiver with enthusiasm at all. In my experience, childhood memories are delicate, because they are very personal. They are emotionally charged for those who have them, but for others, there is nothing more banal, even if they are those of a good author. When the narrator was talking about the strange bond she had with her father or her mother, I can imagine a little bit because I have parents too, but I could never quite understand. Her memories are not mine. The nostalgia that exudes from every corner of her childhood town doesn't really reach me. And honestly, her life wasn't very exciting.

Furthermore, I like suspension points, but not when there are some in each sentence, for almost 300 pages. The little surprise effect they create at the beginning vanishes in a rather record time. An example:

I can run, stroll, turn around, I have all the time in the world... The wall of the boulevard Port-Royal that we skirt is very long... it is only when arriving at the transversal street that I will have to stop and give my hand to cross... I precede the maid to have the time to fill my lungs, which will allow me not to breathe the atrocious odor... she gives me at once the nausea... which emanates from her hair soaked with vinegar.

- Childhood, by Nathalie Sarraute, p. 18

I get it, it expresses what it wants to express, the hesitation, the trial-and-error, the exploration. But I didn't want to read aloud like I usually do because I felt like I was running out of air, and I couldn't wait to move on.

I must admit that I felt a little ashamed when, as I was writing these lines, I did a little research and discovered that the mystery of the second caller wasn't that thick. I wondered a few times if it was a friend? a family member? an imaginary friend, maybe? But no, it was herself. As any good literary person other than me would have guessed in two seconds. Or like any literary person more motivated than I am to solve this little enigma.