(#gifted @fitzcarraldoeditions) Annie Ernaux is probably my favourite non-fiction writer and I will read anything she writes, but I have to admit A Man's Place did not give me the same feeling her work usually does. Ernaux is usually unabashedly shares her innermost thoughts and feelings, allowing the reader an unfiltered glimpse into private and defining moments of her life. But with A Man's Place, she sets about the book differently and outlines this different approach at the very beginning.

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With this biography of her father, Ernaux wanted to stick to the cold hard facts of her dad's life. 'I realise now that a novel is out of the question. In order to tell the story of a life governed by necessity, I have no right to adopt an artistic approach, or attempt to produce something 'moving' or 'gripping'. I shall collate my father's words, tastes and mannerisms, the main events of his life, all the external evidence of his existence, an existence which I too shared.'

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She writes about her father's upbringing and later life with her mother. His own father took him out of school at 12 to work on the farm, saying he had to earn his keep in the family home now. I particularly liked the way she wrote about her parents' use of language and their 'pull yourself up by the bootstraps' mentality, especially her father who grew up with very little. 

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Ernaux deems the style (flawlessly rendered into English by Tanya Leslie) 'neutral', likening it to the approach she took when writing letters home to her parents. I understand why this neutrality is important to her, but I think it came off as a little cold and I ended up not forming much of an attachment to the book. I probably sound callous saying that given it's a true recollection of a man's life, but Ernaux's work usually evokes such a visceral response in me as a reader that this departure from tradition felt strange.

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It never feels comfortable 'judging' things such as memoirs and biographies, and I'm not when it comes to the content. Just that the style she adopted for this particular book, while I understand and appreciate her reasoning, didn't work as well for me as her other books.