The Lover by Marguerite Duras
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Book Reviews of The Lover
Book Review: Beyond the controversy - an excellent coming of age tale
Summary: 5 Stars
This controversial book presents a beautiful coming of age story in which a young French girl and a Chinese aristrocrat have an affair in French Indochina. Beyond a story of love and sex, this tale exquisitely depicts the development of a teenage girl during the most formative time of her life. As Duras usually does in her novels, the story presented is semi-autobiographical, focusing on all of the conflicts of the character's life - from family drama with her brothers to being an outcast at school.
What touched me most about this book was not the love the girl had for her Chinese lover, but the capicity she had to love others in her life - specifically her younger brother and best schoolfriend. Even more touching is that Duras held these memories close to her throughout her life, and as an old woman was still deeply effected by eventually losing those she loved - both emotionally and physically.
Any review of this book that does not mention the talent Duras has for prose would do it a great injustice. Although a small amount of the beauty is lost in the translation into English, much of Duras' poetic yet succinct word play remains in tact.
Book Review: Amazing read
Summary: 5 Stars
L'Amant is an amazing book, full of sorrow and muted passion. It swept me away, and into my own sorrow about love. I read it several times. I've read about 5 novels by Duras, out of her huge catalogue of books (40 or so?). This one is definitely my favorite.Languid language, erotic yet not pornographic, sensual. Fully emotional yet emotionally distant at the same time.
Also, the novel is "semi-autobiographical". It chronicles the first person narrator's love affair with an older chinese man when she was just a poor young teenager. The story has been romanticized heavily from the real life story of Duras, who (I am told by a friend who studied her in depth) was prostituted by her mother to this rich chinese man in her youth. I regret I don't remember the differences between real-life and the book well now. But knowing this opened a further sadness to the story. But I suppose it was the author's way of beautifying a terrible experience she had had.
[Technically I haven't read this book, I read the original French version. But if I write this review for that edition no one will see it.]
Book Review: Simply beautiful
Summary: 5 Stars
I read this book almost 10 years ago, but it remains very vivid in my mind because of the strong imagery, the simple language, and the beautiful but sad story. All I can think of is how so short and simple a book can pack so much human drama in it. To this day, it still gives me materials to think about. I didn't know that the story was semi-autobiographical until later, but I thought so just from reading it because it so intimately describes the young girl's feelings that it would be impossible to make it all up. The description of the crossing of the Mekong River in the beginning will always remain in my mind. So simple, so elegant, and so strong an image. The book was like a beautiful, impressionist painting. There is also a movie by the same title that comes close to capturing the beauty of the book, but of course, nothing can compare to the actual words of Marguerite Duras, a beautiful and mysterious woman shaped by the events of this book. To get to the truth of her life, one must read and interpret this book on their own.Book Review: Spare, Free-Floating
Summary: 5 Stars
"The Lover" is a brief account of a poor 15½-year-old French girl's mismatched relationship with a wealthy older Chinese man. The story takes place in Southeast Asia during the 1930s. The two lovers meet on a ferry boat crossing the Mekong River. He offers to drive her to her boarding school in Saigon; she accepts; and their troubled affair follows shortly after, pitted with social obstacles over race, class, and age.The book is very sparely written with just over 100 pages and virtually no dialogue. The story jumps around quite a bit too. On one page, the young narrator will be describing the future of her family; in the next, she will be reminiscing over her Chinese lover. Her writing style is best suited for readers who like short, free-floating stories.
I read "The Lover" in my sophomore year of high school, and it's still one of my favorite books. I saw the movie several years later, and that too has become one of my favorites. I highly recommend watching it after reading the book. It's absolutely beautiful.
Book Review: wowed
Summary: 5 Stars
A little book, barely 100 pages, packed with so much emotion and imagery i don't even know how to describe it. It is intense, in a way i haven't read in a while. Technically it is a story of a very poor French teenager, in Vietnam in the 1920's, who takes as her lover a wealthy Chinese man. Character-wise, he doesn't seem much more than a boy himself, though he is in his late 20's. But we get so much more information about the girl's life than we do about her affair. We hear about her mother, essentially a crazy woman, about both her brothers and their lives and deaths. The girl, who never gives her name, is weirdly detached from everyone but seems to be able to understand people deeply. The descriptions are lush and exotic. It seems to be a novel full of yearning and need.