News that French writer Annie Ernaux has won the Nobel Prize for literature brought up a connection to Virginia Woolf that Alice Lowe wrote about four years ago in a post titled “The Years and The Years.”

In it, Lowe explores the connections between Ernaux’s 2008 memoir and Woolf’s eponymous 1937 novel. She says she found several links, both direct and implied, between Ernaux and Woolf, and she explores those in depth in her essay published on Bloom.

The Years was the last of Woolf’s novels to be published in her lifetime. It’s a work of straightforward fiction, not autobiographical, yet I’m struck by ways in which its underlying structure and Woolf’s purpose are manifest in Ernaux’s memoir. – Alice Lowe, “The Years by Annie Ernaux: Memoir of a Generation”

Alice Lowe

Ernaux received the prestigious award “for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory.”

Much like Woolf, her work is inspired by her own life. It considers family, class, politics and gender, themes Woolf explored as well.

Lowe’s Woolf fantasy

Lowe recently published a piece about a Woolf fantasy. Titled “Tea for Two,” it is worth a read.