Annie Ernaux tries to discover the different faces of her mother, who died weakened by the illness that destroyed her memory and deprived her of her physical and mental integrity. She attempts to reconstruct the life of this woman who was her mother, an active and open woman to the world, who worked as a laborer before opening her own store, who struggled to maintain her position in society, who was an avid reader and believed that "to rise, one must first learn." However, she is also called upon to confront the conflicting feelings that a daughter often feels for her mother: love and hate, guilt, tenderness, annoyance, but also that visceral and silent attachment to this elderly woman who no longer lives.
Ernaux's precise and clear writing brings back in a sweeping way this mother who was for her daughter the personification of Time and the social condition of her origin: "I lost the last bond I had with a world to which I no longer belong."