A changing view (Nathalie Sarraute’s Enfance)

Abstract

The longing for authenticity prevents any memories of the child that Nathalie Sarraute once was. In fact, the writer doesn’t try to remember the childhood the little Nathacha saw. She doesn’t even try to show herself through her childhood. Her looks cast on her close family or on herself contradict each other, and draw up a changing view, departing from any univocal portrait. With Enfance the invisible becomes visible. But these hidden memories begin with a painful loss—the mother’s absence—that a suspicious view can overcome.