Happening (Hardcover, 1st ed)

In 1963, 23-year-old literature student Annie Ernaux realized she was pregnant by a man she was no longer seeing. As the first college-educated person in a family of storekeepers, she regarded her pregnancy as a social failure. Unsuccessful in her attempt to abort the baby herself with a knitting needle, she sought an abortionist, who carried out the task in a sordid Paris apartment. After expelling the fetus in a dormitory bathroom, Ernaux suffered a hemorrhage and nearly died.

Happening revisits a trauma Ernaux has never overcome. Forty years later, she gathers the details of this experience from memories and journal entries, transforming the suffering, guilt, shame, and self-hate into universal "happenings".