“Look at the Lights, My Love” by Annie Ernaux

Look at the Lights, My Love by Annie Ernaux

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


In a nutshell, this short book is actually a sort of a magazine-style journal essay by a Nobel laureate about her experience over two years of visiting a French superstore. And yes, that seemed interesting to me; I’m weird that way.

Superstores are a ubiquitous part of life, at least in the US. But I grew up without them in Ukraine and I still remember my first absolutely overwhelming experience of walking into a Walmart superstore after only knowing how to shop in tiny stores and outdoor marketplaces — and let’s not forget the absolute monsters like IKEA. (I still treat my yearly trips to IKEA as a full day urban hiking adventure/obstacle course to get from the yellow armchair (that is unnecessary but you just must have) all the way to Swedish meatballs and back hopefully in one piece.)

Memory of that overwhelming superstore experience helped make Annie Ernaux book weirdly relatable, especially as I am not a fan of shopping and a huge loud store with endless aisles is guaranteed to make my eyes glaze over after just a few minutes.

Ernaux looks at her local superstore as a microcosm of society where income and class divisions are painfully obvious, where deepest and darkest secrets are put on display to the others through the contents of the shopping baskets, and stereotypes are still reinforced – but in consumerism-friendly way. With resigned attitude that yet occasionally gets a sharper edge she observes socioeconomic everyday happenings with a writer’s eye.

“Yet when you think of it, there is no other space, public or private, where so many individuals so different in terms of age, income, education, geographic and ethnic background, and personal style, move about and rub shoulders with each other. No enclosed space where people are brought into greater contact with their fellow humans, dozens of times a year, and where each has a chance to catch a glimpse of others’ ways of living and being. Politicians, journalists, “experts,” all those who have never set foot in a superstore, do not know the social reality of France today.”

It’s interesting, but ultimately a bit too long for an essay and a bit too essay-like to sustain even a small book. A litany of understated observations can become a bit repetitive over a hundred pages, and at some point in addition to observations, as witty and interesting they may be, I am expecting something additional to pop up. It’s great up to a point where it almost feels like a guest that’s overstaying their welcome just a bit.

But her insights are interesting as you can see below, and enough for me to want to try more Ernaux in the future:

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“In the world of the superstore and the free-market economy, loving children means buying them as many things as possible.”

“Buying groceries as a couple for the first time confirms that a shared life is truly beginning. It means making adjustments for budgets and tastes, united around the basic need to eat. Proposing that a man or woman accompany you to the superstore is a world away from inviting them to the movies, or to the café for a drink. There is no seductive swagger, no possibility of cheating.”

“The beginning of wealth, of the levity of wealth, is discernible in the act of taking an item from a shelf of food without first checking the price. The humiliation inflicted by commercial goods: they are too expensive, so I’m worth nothing.”

“Wait time at the checkout is the time when we are closest to each other. Observed and observing, listened to and listening—or just getting a sense of each other in a drifting intuitive way. Here, as nowhere else, our way of life and bank account are exposed. Your eating habits, most private interests, even your family structure. The goods deposited on the conveyor belt reveal whether a person lives alone, or with a partner, with a baby, young children, animals. Your body and gestures, alertness or ineptitude, are exposed, as well as your status as a foreigner, if asking for a cashier’s help in counting coins, and consideration for others, demonstrated by setting the divider behind your items in deference to the customer behind, and stacking your empty basket on top of the others. But we don’t really care about being exposed, in the sense that we do not notice and, most of the time, do not talk to each other. As if to strike up conversation would be absurd. Or simply unthinkable for some, with their look of being there but also not, to signal that they are a cut above the great majority of Auchan’s clientele.”

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3.5 stars.

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