Do What They Say or Else

by Annie Ernaux, Christopher Beach (Translator), Carrie Noland (Translator)

Overview

Winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature

Originally published in 1977, Do What They Say or Else is the second novel by French author Annie Ernaux. Set in a small town in Normandy, France, the novel tells the story of a fifteen-year-old girl named Anne, who lives with her working-class parents. The story, which takes place during the summer and fall of Anne’s transition from middle school to high school, is narrated in a stream-of-consciousness style from her point of view. Ernaux captures Anne’s adolescent voice, through which she expresses her keen observations in a highly colloquial style.

As the novel progresses and Anne’s feelings about her parents, her education, and her sexual encounters evolve, she grows into a more mature but also more conflicted and unhappy character, leaving behind the innocence of her middle school years. Not only must she navigate the often-confusing signals she receives from boys, but she also finds herself moving further and further away from her parents as she surpasses their educational level and worldview.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781496228000
Publisher:	Nebraska
Publication date:	10/01/2022
Pages:	120
Sales rank:	1,026,437
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Annie Ernaux, winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature, was born in 1940 in Lillebonne, France. Her novels have won many awards and recognitions, including the 2008 Marguerite Duras Prize and the Prix Renaudot, and three of her novels have been named New York Times Notable Books. She is also the author of Things Seen (Nebraska, 2010). Christopher Beach is an independent scholar and translator who has written and edited books on both literature and film, including Claude Chabrol: Interviews. Carrie Noland is a professor of French literature and comparative literature at the University of California–Irvine and has published translations of Aimé Césaire, Éric Suchère, and Édouard Glissant.

Date of Birth:

1940

Place of Birth:

Lillebonne, France

Education:

University of Rouen; University of Bordeaux

Website:

www.annie-ernaux.org

Read an Excerpt

Sometimes I have the feeling that I have secrets.
They aren’t really secrets, because I don’t want to talk about
them, and besides, they’re things that can’t be told to anyone.
They’re too strange. Céline is going out with a guy from our
high school, a junior. He’s waiting to meet her at four o’clock
on the corner next to the post office. At least it’s clear what her
secret is. If I was her I wouldn’t even hide it. But the person who
I am has no shape. Just thinking about it makes me feel heavy,
like a real fatso. I’d like to sleep until a time when I could understand
myself better—maybe when I’m eighteen or twenty-one.
There must come a day when everything is clear, when everything
falls into place. From then on, there’s nothing to do but
walk the straight and narrow, married with two children and
with a job that isn’t too pitiful. There was a theme for a paper:
“Talk about your dreams for the future.” I got a good grade on
it. The future. When I see all those years of reading books
stretching out in front of me, I feel like I have a hole in my head.
There are all these things that I don’t know yet and that I will
have to be able to write and say. When I was little I would slide
down, on purpose, all the way to the bottom of the bed. I didn’t
want to get up, and it was dark and warm there. I feel the same
way now. Last year I was only thinking about starting high
school. Of course, the teachers were trying to scare us: “Your
grades are just barely good enough . . .” They acted calm and
dignified, but that didn’t help us much when it came to getting
onto the academic track in high school. “You just have to be
more intelligent. It’s not our fault if you don’t make it.” At home,
my mother was always bitching: “You only got an 8 out of 20 in
math! That’s not good. If you just put in a little effort, you’d do
better. Do you want to end up working in a factory?” I know
she’s right, and there’s nothing I can say back. If I didn’t go to
high school—wham!—I would have to start working. Even so,
when she was nagging me, around the time of the high school
orientation last March, I didn’t like it. It would have been better
if she hadn’t said anything. Now she’s feeling reassured. There
won’t be any more fuss until the exam for the bac. I didn’t tell
her that at the end of the first year you could be kicked out of
high school or switched to a technical track. She would’ve made
a big deal about it all year long. My parents don’t have their high
school diplomas, and yet they’re a thousand times more annoying
about it than Céline’s parents, who are engineers or something.
It’s true that her parents don’t need to yell at her. They’re the
living example of success, whereas in the case of my parents,
who are manual workers, I have to be what they tell me to be
and not what they are. I don’t know if I’ll be able to become a
schoolteacher, or even if I still want to be one now. My father
irritates me. He’s always watching me anxiously. “Doesn’t it hurt
your brain to have your face in a book all the time?” Reading’s
not his strong suit: he only reads the newspaper: Paris-Normandie,
and once in a while France-Soir. Sometimes, when he isn’t paying
attention, his lips move while he reads. Maybe he’s right: my
classes are too hard. At the beginning of the school year, I
believed that when I was in school I would only think about
studying. The only people I knew in my grade were Céline and
one inoffensive little fourteen-year-old boy.

Editorial Reviews

08/22/2022

In this unsettling novel from Ernaux (The Years), first published in France in 1977, a teenage girl has her first sexual experience on summer break. Anne, introverted and contemplative at 15, harbors a cool contempt for her working-class parents, especially her mother (“It had been a long time since she had said anything interesting to me”), and imagines living like the misanthropic protagonist of Camus’s The Stranger. She vacillates between the intensities of her boredom (“I wanted something to happen, that was all, and nothing was happening”) and curiosity about her secret-sharing girlfriends, a lecherous neighbor, and sex, which she believes will fundamentally alter her being and place in the world. It doesn’t, as all she learns from losing her virginity to the older, politically engaged Mathieu is “the brutality of boys, their lack of tenderness.” Nonetheless, Anne eludes the watchful gaze of her parents to pursue more sexual encounters, each a disillusionment that further increases her puzzlement. All the while, Ernaux renders a clear-eyed and pitiless depiction of Anne’s dissatisfaction. It adds up to a powerful portrait of a searching adolescent. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

A powerful portrait of a searching adolescent.”—Publishers Weekly


“In this, her second published novel, Annie Ernaux writes the psycho-biology of being fifteen years old with perfect recall. Do What They Say or Else conveys the cost of upward mobility and the desire to just throw it all away. Ernaux is in perfect control of her narrator’s wildness. The result is vivid and tough.”—Chris Kraus, author of After Kathy Acker: A Literary Biography


“Annie Ernaux is often celebrated for her minimalist and documentary style. Yet this second novel, very funny at times, is narrated from the perspective of a teenage girl, with a vindictive and self-deprecating tone that ranges from the colloquial to the outright vulgar. This translation is a true tour de force!”—Bruno Thibault, author of Danièle Sallenave et le don des morts

From the Publisher