‘The Possession’ by Annie Ernaux   (2002) – 62 pages           Translated from the French by Anna Moschovakis

In ‘The Possession’, a woman tells of being possessed. Her boyfriend of six years has gone off to live with another woman. She is possessed by a profound jealousy of this other woman.

“This woman filled my head, my chest, and my gut, she was always with me, she took control of my emotions.”

As is the case with many of the works of Annie Erbnaux, ‘The Possession’ could be called a semi-fiction, part memoir and part fiction. Another phrase to describe ‘The Possession’ would be to call it an autobiographical novella.

“The strangest thing about jealousy is that it can populate an entire city – the whole world – with a person you may never have met.”

Here she goes through all the stages of jealousy. First she wants to find out exactly who this other woman is, so she plays guessing games with her ex-boyfriend who she still sees on occasion.

“He had not wanted to tell me her name. This name was a hole, a void around which I turned in circles.”

She asks him to tell her the first letter of the other woman’s first name. At one point she admits that her thoughts had turned murderous toward this other woman.

“In the self-erasure that is the state of jealousy, which transforms every difference into a lack, it was not only my body, my face, that were devalued but also my occupation – my entire being.”

However, by the end of this novella, she no longer has any desire to know anything about this other woman. She has moved on.

Grade:   A