In L’Événement (The Event), Annie Ernaux recounts in vivid detail, and with the perspective of several decades, three months of her life—from October 1963 to January 1964. These are the months between discovering she is pregnant and the days following her abortion, which was illegal in France at the time. “To what extent should a woman have the right to control her own body?” Françoise Gillard gives voice to the story that marked Ernaux’s twenty-third year, confronting, without compromise, the realities of womanhood.