The Lover by Marguerite Duras Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Lover
Book Review: Like a thin memory...
Summary: 5 Stars
Almost stream-of-consciousness. Beautiful and lyrical and sad.Makes you think about what life is all about and what will happen as we age and face death. Very beautiful and somewhat erotic.
The movie is beautiful and erotic as well. I recommend both.
Book Review: Lost Love
Summary: 5 Stars
I first saw the movie for this book. One of my all time favorites, I highly recommend seeing it. I was drawn into this book, into the life the girl lived. The sensuality, the loss, and then the memories.
Still one of my favorite books to read, after reading it over and over again.
I wonder if Marguerite Duras lover still thinks of her, i wonder if losing him, is what made her life so hard.
I
I Review: Lost and lonely in colonial life
Summary: 5 Stars This is a novel about two lonely people - but obviously it's autobiographical, about an intense love affair between a quietly assertive 15 year-old and a Chinese man twice her age. The characters are weary, weeping, exhausted by the heat, by the failure of their dreams. The lovers are beautiful and erotic, but to me the most powerful and intense character is the girl's mother - determined, sad, loving and fiercely loved. I also loved the descriptions of the river, flowing on uncaring. The oppressive heat overwhelms and weakens the characters. The story has the atmosphere of a Graham Greene novel, without the politics. I have never seen the movie, but fear it may be soft porn.
Book Review: Meandering and Confusing
Summary: 1 Stars
I am not sure where the adulation for this book comes from and I realize I am in the minority in not liking it. I found this book very difficult to follow and the ceaseless jumping about from time to time was annoying. There was also a surprising amount of repetition in this short book. I really wanted to like this book. It might be better with a second read but life is too short for that.Book Review: Memoir or fiction? The Lover doesn't disappoint!
Summary: 5 Stars
The Lover is, first and formost, a tragedy of two lovers destined to part. Marguerite Duras has created a world in which love, in many forms, is still found (if only briefly) in the face of ever-present impossibilty. While arguably semi-autobiographical, the real charm of this book is its grittiness and willingness to present a world in which people can and do make choices that they know will only lead to ruin and disappointment, and still live with the consequences.Duras' narrator, an unnamed woman reflecting back on her coming of age in Saigon, shares her life in a frank yet touching way. The depth of thought and feeling the character portrays lends a sense of reality. Does she love the man from Chalong? Is this just prostitution? Is she driven by poverty and desperation, or is she seeking an escape from the horrors at home? I suspect even Duras was unsure, and this fallability of her narrator is what makes her so real and engaging.
The passion of the lovers, featured so prominently in the erotic loves scenes of the film adaptation, are far more subtle in the novel. There are no cheap thrills here, and those looking for wild descriptions of who does what to whom are bound to be disappointed. This is no Harliquin romance. Perhaps the most sexually explicit description is not of the heroine's time with the man from Cholong but of her fantasies about her friend Helen. These fantasies inform us of the nature of her sexual relationship with her Chinese lover more than any other memory. they also highlight the young girl's search for compassion and love that has been missing from her life to this point.
The life of Duras' lovers offers an interesting allegory to the decline of the French Indochinoise colonies. Its clear that the best days of the empire have past, the power of the 'natives' and the Chinese in Saigon is increasing, and the Second World War looms large on the horizon. Like Duras' young girl, the French relationship with 'exotic' Asia is doomed to failure. The descriptions of Cholong, the Mekong Delta and Cambodia are clear and recognizable even to modern visitors, and will surely interest those who have been there themselves.
Some readers may be disappointed that there is no happy ending for this book. Love stories are most often about hope. These lovers, however, have other things to share with us. This is a wonderful book and a refreshingly honest portrayal of love.