Happening

In 1963, a twenty-three-year-old Annie Ernaux discovers she is pregnant. In France of that time, abortions were forbidden. “The Event,” written forty years later, tells about several months during which she hid her pregnancy from her parents, sought help from acquaintances and doctors, and in vain tried to induce an abortion using a knitting needle. Told in the harsh simplicity of facts, the story shows us a society of taboos and class prejudices, where what the heroine experienced becomes an initiation. Relying on diary entries and memory, carefully building a double perspective, Ernaux finds a new meaning for what she lived through.