The Possession by Annie Ernaux
In her latest translated novella, Nobel Prize-winning author Annie Ernaux examines the fixations and addictions of jealousy
Raw and resonant, Annie Ernaux’s newly translated novella The Possession offers up a stream of fixations and divulgences that the narrator treats with utmost openness. Originally published in French in 2008, the story follows a woman dealing with the aftermath of her ex-husband’s affair with another woman who becomes subject to the narrator’s ruminations. Ernaux creates a voyeuristic world that briefly but totally immerses readers and shares a piece of herself through the primary emotion that drives this book: jealousy.
Mainstream media often associates jealousy with ‘toxic’ relationships and women. Women are taught to feel the shame of loss and subsequently, of desire, but through a stream of confessions and recollections, Ernaux weaves experiences of obsession, addiction, and insecurity into the human fabric of being. The narrator’s jealousy triggers the instant desire to uncover truth through a ‘frantic assembling of signs.’ Once we realise that this kind of insecurity is our default state – that we are not immune to things like jealousy, paranoia, and obsession – we recognise that suffering unites us, and that makes for what Ernaux calls the ‘poetic function at work in literature, religion, and paranoia.’ Emotions, like institutions, may become systems that dictate our perception of life, but Ernaux’s writing understands the privilege of understanding that life, liberation, and relief also comes from within.