Cleaned Out tells the story of Denise Lesur, a 20-year-old woman suffering the after-effects of a back-alley abortion. Alone in her college dorm room, Denise attempts to understand how her suffocating middle-class upbringing has brought her to such an awful present. Ernaux, one of France's most important contemporary writers, daringly breaks with formal French literary tradition in this moving novel about abortion, growing up, and coming to terms with one's childhood.
"Written with raw and powerful images, Annie Ernaux says the 'unsayable' as she confronts the experience of having an abortion and of growing up in the post-World War II generation—all in a fresh, original voice." (San Francisco Chronicle 12-16-90)
"Without romanticizing or moralizing, Ernaux imaginatively and artfully presents a universal theme: the hopefulness and hopelessness of life." (Library Journal 12-90)
"Cleaned Out is more than a powerful evocation of the class system in France in the 1950s and of one woman's struggle to move up in the class hierarchy and forget her past. It is also a novel that serves as a haunting contribution, both in subject matter and literary form, to the project of the culturally disenfranchised speaking in their own voice." (Bloomsbury Review Jan-Feb 93)
"Raises social and cultural issues that are addressed with uncompromising gut-level emotion. . . . Denise flounders between self-hate and resentment of her family's heritage as she mimics the new role model of bourgeois schoolmates while also confronting the shame she feels for deserting her parents and their set of values." (Booklist 11-1-90)
"Cleaned Out is a tough story of a young girl's coming-of-age in postwar France, a story filled with the spirit of Elvis, Sartre, jazz and the nasty little verities of adolescence." (Publishers Weekly 12-9-96)
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