The Possession

“The strangest thing about jealousy is that it can populate an entire city—the whole world—with a person you may never have met.”

These first words set the framework for The Possession, a striking portrait of a woman after a love affair has ended. Annie Ernaux pulls the reader through every step of jealousy, of a woman’s need to know who has replaced her in a lost beloved’s life. Ernaux’s writing, characteristically gorgeous in its precision, depicts the all too familiar human tendency to seek control and certainty after rejection.

"To establish boundaries and thus render her jealousy less amorphous, Ernaux seeks to concretize the identity of her "enemy." Initially, this heightens her passion. As she relentlessly inscribes her odyssey, however, she begins to tire of the effort to sustain this self-perpetuated occupation, ultimately moving beyond the emotion by which she defined herself during its reign."  -  Michele Levy, World Literature Today