The Lover by Marguerite Duras
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Book Reviews of The Lover
Book Review: Beautifully Written
Summary: 5 Stars
I read this book in one day. This was my first introduction to Duras. What an incredible story! Her writing is like poetry, like a song, filled with lyrical descriptions of her surroundings as well as her feelings, filled with gorgeous imagery and constant forshadowing towards the demise of her own family. The story itself would be totally unacceptable by today's (or the entire 20th century's) standards, being that of an illicit love affair, set in prewar Indochina (today's Vietnam) between a 15-year-old French girl and a 27-year-old Chinese son of a millionaire. However, it is what it is, it happened, and the way the story is told is beautiful and impassioned.
What's most amazing here is the evolution of the girl's psyche. In many ways, she was obviously mature way beyond her years, fatalistic and dark, all brought on by the loneliness and frustration of life with her mother and brothers. At the same time, she was naive in the sense that she thought she was strong enough to handle this affair without falling in love. The girl tried to convince herself that money was the only objective in this affair (when in fact, money was the only reason why her mother(!) allowed her to continue see her lover--ouch!).
Duras' writing reminds me of that of Maxine Hong Kingston's (or is it vice versa?). Many thoughts are repeated throughout the pages, like refrains or choruses. She switches the narrative from first to third person. She switches time frames from past to present and back again. It's as if the whole novel was written completely stream-of-consciousness, or possibly a parallel to the unpredictable horrors of her own mother's madness.
The young girl grew up in a sad, unloving and erratic home, with an unstable mother, whose unhealthy allegience to her devious and abusive older brother created an almost intolerable environment for the author and her younger brother. Additionally, the time frame was such that a relationship between a white woman and a Chinese man, (let's face it: An adolescent and a grown man) was completely reprehensible. In the face of all these obstacles, it was clear that the author sought refuge with this young man, and that for her, this first taste of sexual passion would be the standard in which all of her future loves would be measured. She never sugar-coated the various facets to this affair, the degrading moments, the moments where the love and passion was so infinite, or when the roles of power and possession were reversed from time to time. Yet, it's clear that this affair, which lasted a year-and-a-half, was very deep and meaningful to both parties, a tragic and impossible love that would haunt them both for the rest of their lives.
Book Review: A Tautly Written Novel of Memory and Erotic Yearning
Summary: 5 Stars
Winner of France's most prestigious literary award, the Prix Goncourt, in 1984, "The Lover" is a tautly written, first person narrative of a fifteen year old French girl's affair with a Chinese man nearly twice her age in Vietnam circa 1930. Like other works of Marguerite Duras, "The Lover" conflates a vivid and deeply sensuous literary imagination with thinly-veiled autobiographical elements and a non-linear, ever shifting perspective. The result is a short, powerful novel of memory and erotic yearning. a novel which lingers in the reader's mind long after the last page.Neither the girl nor her Chinese lover has a name. The girl meets the Chinese lover on a ferry, seeing him in a limousine while she is returning to boarding school in Saigon. She is wearing a flat brimmed fedora hat, a silk dress turned sepia-toned with age, and gold lame high heels. She is a girl who is accustomed to people looking at her. "People do look at white women in the colonies; at twelve-year-old white girls too. For the past three years white men, too, have been looking at me in the streets, and my mother's men friends have been kindly asking me to have tea with them while their wives are out playing tennis."
Each is a starkly drawn character acting in ways that seem predestined. The Chinese lover does not intend to marry her, only to be her lover. The girl surrenders to what seems her fate. "She agreed to come as soon as he asked her the previous evening. She's where she has to be, placed here. She feels a tinge of fear. It's as if this must be not only what she expects, but also what had to happen especially to her. She says, I'd rather you didn't love me. But if you do, I'd like you to do as you usually do with women."
It is a deeply moving erotic tale. It is also a tale of the girl's troubled life, of her strained relationships with her mother and her two brothers, and the way those relationships color her affair. Her mother speaks of "blatant prostitution and laughs at the scandal." And in her elder brother's presence, the Chinese man "ceases to be [her] lover." "He doesn't cease to exist, but he's no longer anything to me. He becomes a burnt-out shell."
Written in one short paragraph after another, moving back and forth in time, ever changing its narrative locus, "The Lover" paints a fictional world of eroticism, longing and memory. The result is a compelling work of fiction, nothing less than a minor masterpiece of Twentieth century French literature.
Book Review: Tautly Written Novel of Memory and Erotic Yearning
Summary: 5 Stars
Winner of France's most prestigious literary award, the Prix Goncourt, in 1984, "The Lover" is a tautly written, first person narrative of a fifteen year old French girl's affair with a Chinese man nearly twice her age in Vietnam circa 1930. Like other works of Marguerite Duras, "The Lover" conflates a vivid and deeply sensuous literary imagination with thinly-veiled autobiographical elements and a non-linear, ever shifting perspective. The result is a short, powerful novel of memory and erotic yearning. a novel which lingers in the reader's mind long after the last page.Neither the girl nor her Chinese lover has a name. The girl meets the Chinese lover on a ferry, seeing him in a limousine while she is returning to boarding school in Saigon. She is wearing a flat brimmed fedora hat, a silk dress turned sepia-toned with age, and gold lame high heels. She is a girl who is accustomed to people looking at her. "People do look at white women in the colonies; at twelve-year-old white girls too. For the past three years white men, too, have been looking at me in the streets, and my mother's men friends have been kindly asking me to have tea with them while their wives are out playing tennis."
Each is a starkly drawn character acting in ways that seem predestined. The Chinese lover does not intend to marry her, only to be her lover. The girl surrenders to what seems her fate. "She agreed to come as soon as he asked her the previous evening. She's where she has to be, placed here. She feels a tinge of fear. It's as if this must be not only what she expects, but also what had to happen especially to her. She says, I'd rather you didn't love me. But if you do, I'd like you to do as you usually do with women."
It is a deeply moving erotic tale. It is also a tale of the girl's troubled life, of her strained relationships with her mother and her two brothers, and the way those relationships color her affair. Her mother speaks of "blatant prostitution and laughs at the scandal." And in her elder brother's presence, the Chinese man "ceases to be [her] lover." "He doesn't cease to exist, but he's no longer anything to me. He becomes a burnt-out shell."
Written in one short paragraph after another, moving back and forth in time, ever changing its narrative locus, "The Lover" paints a fictional world of eroticism, longing and memory. The result is a compelling work of fiction, nothing less than a minor masterpiece of Twentieth century French literature.
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.
Book Review: Duras' transgressive body undermines the patriarchy.
Summary: 5 Stars
The present review discusses the French girl's transgressive body which deconstructs and undermines the patriarchal machination in Marguerite Duras¡¦ The Lover and The North China Lover. In these two complementary autobiographical novels, Marguerite Duras relates her first sexual experience when she was only fifteen years old. In the novels, the French girl expresses her so-called first erotic orgasm experience with a Chinese lover. Her sexual drive does not come from love but from a woman¡¦s awakening. In the patriarchal society, women¡¦s sexuality has always been well controlled by men; the French girl¡¦s eagerness to get excessive sexual jouissance poses a threat to the patriarchal machination. The patriarchal ideology is omnipresent. We can find this male-centered ideology exists in the education, principle, rules, works, media, arts, literature, activities, and religion. Not only men, but also women internalize the masculine opinion that women are inferior to men in the androcentric society and have become conspirators of the patriarchal structurality; however, women still live according to the patriarchal rules without doubt. So far as the European colonialist is concerned, the biblical theology and ethics which are developed under the conditions of patriarchy have been the products of males. Many people read the Bible, learn of the biblical miracles, and act according to biblical rules without questioning the adequacy of its content. In fact, if we analyze the Bible and compare and contrast the biblical stories and commandments, we will find that the Bible is not such a righteous Gospel as we think. Especially, there are too many conflicts, taboos, and unfair rules which have constrained women and caused a dilemma for females for the past two thousand years. In The Lover and The North China Lover, the French girl uses her sexuality to express and exalt her own transcendent power. Her transgressive body totally betrays a nostalgia for a female Eden and breaks the norms of the biblical sexual limits. We can say the French girl is an advocate avant garde of the modern feminists who defies this patriarchal machination successfully.