In 1963, Annie Ernaux, 23 years old, unmarried, learns that she is pregnant. Shame overwhelms her like a plague: she knows that pregnancy will stigmatize herself and her family, she knows that she should not keep this child. In a France where abortions were illegal, she tried in vain to get rid of it on her own, using primitive methods. Scared and desperate, she finally manages to find a solution and ends up in the emergency room of a hospital where she almost died. Forty years later, she retrieves her diaries and tries to organize her memories in order to grasp the essential meaning, the reason why this experience marked her so deeply.

The fact is the story of this trauma, a trauma that she never got over.

The book was the basis for the film of the same name, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 2021.