I think all I wish is that the story could've been longer.

Intimate, both personal but also looking at her father's life with a lens of the time her father lived, not just from Ernaux's own perspective but from a historical perspective, this reflection on her father's life and what it meant to him was worth every minute spent reading it. I don't have much else to say other than I really enjoyed it. I read to read stories like this.

At the beginning, I just thought it would be a depressing and sad story, but as I continued it, I found there was so much to learn from her father's perspective, that also helped me understand the way my grandparents think, and how people's mindset and attitude toward life, work, and their relationships didn't change as quickly as their society and their quality of life had changed after world war two. I think this is a book I'll come back to, not just because it's a quick read but because those few pages are packed densely with meaning.