Annie Ernaux turns her attention to the phenomenon of the big-box superstore, a ubiquitous feature of modern life that has received scant attention in literature. Recording her visits to a store near Paris for over a year, she captures the world that exists within its massive walls.
Translated from the French with great intelligence and sensitivity by Alison Strayer ... Ernaux’s diary is a provocation: to accept these life scenes as worthy of our time and attention. Strayer’s translation takes this on within the context of English-language literature, expanding its capacity to hold such miscellany as the physiognomy of a suburban French superstore.
Look at the Lights records the mundane routines and behavior that are to be expected in the superstore environment ... Ernaux’s diary is meticulous and spontaneous at once, a collection of details crucial and not. It is also a work in progress, developing in real time ... She is deeply invested in recording the 'present,' because this is how she can 'distinguish objects, individuals, and mechanisms, and to give their existence value'—to write, not just see. But this present is already becoming past.
Ernaux is writing as both watcher and participant ... Perfectly understated...a brilliant encapsulation of Ernaux’s particular minimalism at work ... Each moment, in other words, exists independently and on its own terms, which means that even a suburban superstore, that late capitalist monument to consumption, is likely to be recalled one day through a more human lens.
