A Frozen Woman cover art

A Frozen Woman

 Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends December 16, 2025 11:59pm GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

A Frozen Woman

By: Annie Ernaux
Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends December 16, 2025 11:59pm GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

Only £0.99 a month for the first 3 months. Pay £0.99 for the first 3 months, and £8.99/month thereafter. Renews automatically. Terms apply. Start my membership

About this listen

This narrative charts Annie Ernaux's teenage awakening and then the parallel progression of her desire to be desirable and her ambition to fulfill herself in her chosen profession - with the inevitable conflict between the two. And then she is 30 years old, a teacher married to an executive, a mother of two infant sons.

She looks after their nice apartment and raises her children. And yet, like millions of other women, she has felt her enthusiasm and curiosity, her strength and her happiness, slowly ebb under the weight of her daily routine. The very condition that everyone around her seems to consider normal and admirable for a woman is killing her.

While each of Ernaux's books contains an autobiographical element, A Frozen Woman, one of Ernaux's early works, concentrates the spotlight piercingly on Annie herself. Mixing affection, rage, and bitterness, A Frozen Woman shows us Ernaux's developing art when she still relied on traditional narrative, before the shortened form emerged that has since become her trademark.

©2019 Dreamscape Media, LLC (P)2019 Dreamscape Media, LLC Art & Literature Authors Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Women Women's Fiction

Listeners also enjoyed...

 A Man's Place cover art
The Years cover art
A Woman's Story cover art
Simple Passion cover art
Happening cover art
Mrs. Dalloway cover art
The Garden Party and Other Stories cover art
Speak Memory cover art
All stars
Most relevant
Annie Ernaux is like no other. Such a good writer. I can read her again and again. It is a therapy for me. Thank you Annie.

Asdis G. Thorsteinsdottir

Á frozen woman

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The start hooks you, then It gets a bit slow in the middle, and then - suddenly - it's phenomenal. Annie Ernaux writes with such honesty and accuracy and simplicity, she becomes the voice of countless women - every sentence lacerates. Women who have given birth, and women who can relate to the loneliness of new motherhood will find comfort in this, like a friend who understands. And people like me who have not given birth or ever been new mothers will have their eyes opened to what so many go through. A wonderful book, everybody should read this. It's left me a more compassionate person.

And Tavia Gilbert's reading is excellent, too.

Magnificent

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.