The Lover
by Marguerite Duras
List Price:
Our Price: $5.93
You Save: $6.07 (51%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $2.50 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Marguerite DurasEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1998-09-08
ISBN: 0375700528
Number of pages: 128
Publisher: Pantheon
Product features:
- The Lover
- English
- First Edition
- Paperback
- gelatine plate paper
Book Reviews of The Lover
Book Review: From Lolita's point of view ...
Summary: 5 Stars
...well, not literally, but there certainly are parallels. This novella is set in Indochina, in the `30's, and is told, via fragments of the memory of an older woman now living in France, of her life as a precocious 15 year old, and her first sexual experiences, and perhaps, with the emphasis on the uncertainty, despite the title, of her first love. The book is light on eroticism; it is far more about the female use of sex for, if you will, "empowerment," which, in part, involves escape from an unhappy childhood situation. In gold lame high-heels and a foppish male hat, she meets her lover (or victim?), a 27 year old son of a Chinese millionaire, on a ferry as they cross the Mekong.
Marguerite Duras wrote the screenplay for the movie, "Hiroshima, Mon Amour," released 50 years ago. Far more so, the movie IS about love; like "The Lover," the love is trans-cultural, and each individual has experienced a significant trauma: the Japanese male was near Hiroshima, and lost family members there when the A-Bomb was dropped; she is French, and had a German officer as a lover in the village of Nevers, known for its "calme," and after the war she was ostracized as a "collabo," including having her hair shorn. "The Lover" also concerns West-East love, again, between a French woman (girl) and an Oriental male. The "trauma" each has experienced is more internalized, relating to their family. He can never be his "own man," living under the shadow of a domineering father. She lives in a very dysfunctional family, with a worthless elder brother, who keeps the family mired in poverty through his drug and gambling addictions, and a mother, from her Picardy farm, who worships him, largely neglecting the other two siblings.
For a novella, Duras has more insights than many a 600 page novel. Her style is rich and dense, and I do NOT feel that she is projecting the wisdom of a middle age woman back onto a 15-year old. Consider: "I know it's not clothes that make women beautiful or otherwise, nor beauty care, nor expensive creams, nor the distinction or costliness of their finery. I know the problem lies elsewhere. I don't know where. I only know it isn't where women think." Or, "You didn't have to attract desire. Either it was in the woman who aroused it or it didn't exist. Either it was there at first glance or else it had never been. It was instant knowledge of sexual relationships, or it was nothing. That too I knew before I experienced it."
The book is also about the "expat" existence, that transcends the 40,000 French "colons," who were the raison d'etre for drawing both France, and later, the United States, into seemingly endless war, first for their "lifestyles," but later, for the "glory," "honor", and eventually, "saving face," of their respective countries. But this particular expat story did not involve riches, and a fancy lifestyle, but poverty, the "barely getting by," that was rather surprising, even though they too had servants. Consider: "... from the frightful loneliness of serving in out-posts up-country, stranded amid checkered stretches of rice, fear, madness, fever and oblivion." They lived primarily in Sadec, a small town in the Mekong delta, which alas, I had never heard of. They did have a large house, with the veranda, and could see the "mountains of Siam," in the evening, which was the only puzzling part of the book, since clearly you couldn't.
That quibble aside, Marguerite Duras has written a rich, beautiful novel, concerning the time when we thought we were fresh, and awaking into one of the most fundamental aspects of human existence, and as will happen all too frequently, it was tawdry.
Summary of The Lover
An international best-seller with more than one million copies in print and a winner of France's Prix Goncourt, The Lover has been acclaimed by critics all over the world since its first publication in 1984.Set in the prewar Indochina of Marguerite Duras's childhood, this is the haunting tale of a tumultuous affair between an adolescent French girl and her Chinese lover. In spare yet luminous prose, Duras evokes life on the margins of Saigon in the waning days of France's colonial empire, and its representation in the passionate relationship between two unforgettable outcasts.
Long unavailable in hardcover, this edition of The Lover includes a new introduction by Maxine Hong Kingston that looks back at Duras's world from an intriguing new perspective--that of a visitor to Vietnam today.
From the Hardcover edition.
Historical Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Historical Books
Pirate Latitudes: A Novelby Michael Crichton
Harper; Published: 2009-11-24; Roughcut; Book
Best price: $2.48
Price in other shops:
The Master Butchers Singing Club: A Novelby Louise Erdrich
Harper Perennial; Published: 2004-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.00
Price in other shops:
The Last Witchfinder: A Novelby James Morrow
William Morrow; Published: 2006-03-14; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $4.00
Price in other shops:
Zorroby Isabel Allende
HarperAudio; Published: 2005-05-03; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $3.21
Price in other shops:
The Hot Kid: A Novelby Elmore Leonard
William Morrow; Published: 2005-05-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $2.89
Price in other shops:
The Last Kingdom (The Saxon Chronicles Series #1)Mass Market Paperback; Book
Bones of the Hills (Conqueror, Book 3)by Conn Iggulden
Harper Collins Canada; Published: 2008; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $44.70
Marchby Geraldine Brooks
Penguin Books; Published: 2006; Paperback; Book
Emperor (Emperor 1)by Conn Iggulden
Harpercollins Pb; Published: 2003-06-07; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.80
Girl With a Pearl Earringby Tracy Chevalier
Harper Collins Audio; Published: 2002-06-17; Audio Cassette; Book
Best price: $133.98
Similar Books and other products
Rue Ordener, Rue Labat (Stages)by Sarah Kofman
University of Nebraska Press; Published: 1996-08-28; Paperback; Book
Best price: $13.99
Price in other shops:
I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivorsby Bernice Eisenstein
Riverhead Trade; Published: 2007-08-07; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.13
Price in other shops:
Swann's Way: In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 1 (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)by Marcel Proust
Penguin Classics; Published: 2004-11-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.94
Price in other shops:
Herculine Barbin (Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth Century French Hermaphrodite)by Michel Foucault
Vintage; Published: 1980-06-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.65
Price in other shops:
The Maids and Deathwatch: Two Playsby Jean Genet
Grove Press; Published: 1994-02-16; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.95
Price in other shops:
Black, White & Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Selfby Rebecca Walker
Riverhead Trade; Published: 2002-01-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.28
Price in other shops:
Les Fleurs Du Mal (English and French Edition)by Charles Baudelaire
David R. Godine; Published: 1985-10-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $11.13
Price in other shops:
A Lover's Discourse: Fragmentsby Roland Barthes
Hill and Wang; Published: 2010-10-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.90
Price in other shops:
The LoverSony; Release date: 2001-12-11; DVD
Best price: $6.95
Price in other shops:
Story of the Eyeby Georges Bataille
City Lights Publishers; Published: 2001-01-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.69
Price in other shops: