The Lover by Marguerite Duras
|
List Price: Our Price: $6.48 You Save: $5.52 (46%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.39 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of The Lover
Book Review: Twisted and perfect
Summary: 5 Stars
I first saw the movie which was based on this book. I absolutely adored the movie and I couldn't wait to read the book. This book is one of the best books I ever read (and I read a lot). It's absolutely amazing. The story is about a fifteen-year-old girl who falls in love with a wealthy twenty-nine-year-old China man in 1930's Indochina. But the greatness of this book doesn't come from the story line, it lays in the way Marguerite Duras tells the story. From the first page you can feel that this is her story. Her prose is so poetic and hauntig, somewhat obsessive. This book is so intimate and personal. It felt like Marguerite was sitting right across me and telling me the story of her first real love and ... experience. But the relationship between her and China man is not like a normal relationship between two people in love. At one point her lover gives her the money for sleeping with him. There is also an interesting relationship between Marguerite and her best friend, a beautiful girl named Helen Lagonelle. There is even a passage when the two kiss and when Marguerite finds out she's going back to France, she offers her lover to take Helen so he could forget her easier. This book is unforgettable. It's fantastic, hauntig and somewhat dark. It explores the human passion. I had an opportunity to read this book in french (the original)and I never knew before that french can be so beautiful. In short, this book is more than perfect and I recommend it to everyone who is looking for some twisted and unforgettable true story.Book Review: IF YOU ARE A WRITER, LEARN FROM THIS BOOK
Summary: 5 Stars
I have read this book 126 times. Every time I read it I learn something new. A lot has been said about the power of its content, the story of passion and longing and the mysteries of love and death. But its true brilliance comes from its form, the WAY in which the story is told. A single image is unfolded and within it we find all the mysteries of life opening and closing, coming clear for a brief moment, then vanishing. I do not think any other book has the same form as this one. This is why it is brilliant. Duras created something utterly unique. All the 'rules' of structure are tossed away. Passages flow one into the next and the connection between them is both seamless and invisible. It may seem random, or intuitive, at first, but as you look deeper you will find there is a deliberate order whose subtlety is unsurpassed, a work of power. Another interesting point for writers comes from comparing this book with Duras' earlier book, 'The North China Lover'. This other book tells the same story, without any of the depth or power of 'The Lover'. I believe it was a first draft, and 'The Lover' is what became of that first story after years and years of editing and distillation. The contrast between the two is a good lesson in how and why to edit what you write.
Book Review: IF YOU ARE A WRITER, LEARN FROM THIS BOOK
Summary: 5 Stars
I have read this book 126 times. Every time I read it I learn something new. A lot has been said about the power of its content, the story of passion and longing and the mysteries of love and death. But its true brilliance comes from its form, the WAY in which the story is told. A single image is unfolded and within it we find all the mysteries of life opening and closing, coming clear for a brief moment, then vanishing. I do not think any other book has the same form as this one. This is why it is brilliant. Duras created something utterly unique. All the 'rules' of structure are tossed away. Passages flow one into the next and the connection between them is both seamless and invisible. It may seem random, or intuitive, at first, but as you look deeper you will find there is a deliberate order whose subtlety is unsurpassed, a work of power. Another interesting point for writers comes from comparing this book with Duras' earlier book, 'The North China Lover'. This other book tells the same story, without any of the depth or power of 'The Lover'. I believe it was a first draft, and 'The Lover' is what became of that first story after years and years of editing and distillation. The contrast between the two is a good lesson in how and why to edit what you write.
Book Review: IF YOU ARE A WRITER, LEARN FROM THIS BOOK
Summary: 5 Stars
I have read this book 126 times. Every time I read it I learn something new. A lot has been said about the power of its content, the story of passion and longing and the mysteries of love and death. But its true brilliance comes from its form, the WAY in which the story is told. A single image is unfolded and within it we find all the mysteries of life opening and closing, coming clear for a brief moment, then vanishing. I do not think any other book has the same form as this one. This is why it is brilliant. Duras created something utterly unique. All the 'rules' of structure are tossed away. Passages flow one into the next and the connection between them is both seamless and invisible. It may seem random, or intuitive, at first, but as you look deeper you will find there is a deliberate order whose subtlety is unsurpassed, a work of power. Another interesting point for writers comes from comparing this book with Duras' earlier book, 'The North China Lover'. This other book tells the same story, without any of the depth or power of 'The Lover'. I believe it was a first draft, and 'The Lover' is what became of that first story after years and years of editing and distillation. The contrast between the two is a good lesson in how and why to edit what you write.
Book Review: beautiful...
Summary: 5 Stars
There is such a deficit of good modern European novels written by women. Marguerite Duras stands out as one of the best. This short, autobiographical novel tells the story of a girl living in French Indochina and her affair with a wealthy Chinese man. However, what makes this novel so great is not the story but the way it is told. Duras' prose is lyrical and shifts from the first to the third person, moving in and out of her childhood years to her adult self reflecting on the past. Many passages made me shiver with their poetic beauty, and the end is profoundly sad.Duras meditates on love, death, and her complex relationship with her mother and brothers. Her tangled and often brutally ugly familial relationships should strike a chord with any reader. What I found perhaps most thought-provoking were the passages on being a writer; Duras writes, "Sometimes I realize that if writing isn't, all things, all contraries confounded, a quest for vanity and void, it's nothing. That if it's not, each time, all things confounded inot one thorugh some inexpressible essence, then writing is nothing by advertisement." If this is indeed the definition of writing, than Duras is certainly a true writer.