The Lover (Flamingo) [Paperback]

The first thing to note about this book is that it is one of three accounts of supposed real life events in the writer's life, when she was a young girl growing up in Indochina. The other published version, in a script-like form, is The North China Lover, which alters certain details and certainly fills in more of the characters and time. Either way, she is the poor white colonial girl, he is the rich son of a Chinese millionaire. This is a highly romanticised version of the truth. To understand the truth (or as much of it as is known), it is worth tracking down a biography of the writer. But as far as this book is concerned, it is no straightforward novel, and to read it as such will almost certainly result in disappointment. Duras takes an interesting approach to this fictionalised tale of her adolescence. She alternates both between the present and past tense, and between the first and third person voice. She describes some scenes in the moment, like vivid memories, but sometimes she appears to be standing outside herself - as she does in the scene when she imagines a photograph of herself as she stands on the ferry crossing the Mekong River. This is the fateful journey that introduces her to her rich lover. She sees herself from the outside, perhaps as the lover sees her, or God. She thinks there ought to be a photograph of such an important moment, but there isn't, because who would have thought that trip across the river would be so fateful.

This story of forbidden love, the 'memories' of it, are interrrupted by more recent recollections, and thoughts on people she once knew. The novel then becomes fragmented, which is emphasised by the way paragraphs are framed almost like sections. It's precisely this fragmentation that divides readers. Those who want a romantic or erotic read, with a more linear plot are liable to be frustrated by the constant interruptions in the Indochina plot. But Duras was an elderly woman by the time she wrote this book, and it makes sense that she might weave the events of her youth into the wider context of her life. There's a quality of musing at times.

What Duras, who had a reputation for arrogance, was really doing, was making a romantic legend out of what was probably a less than edifying erotic relationship. Read The Lover for what it is, a classic of fictionalised memory, and not for what it might have been - an exotic bonkbuster/lovestory with a simple linear plot. And if you're interested, check out The North China Lover which fills in more of the girl's family tensions. Otherwise, this is a beautifully written, poetic 'novel', written in a spare feminine style. If modern classic fiction interests you, or important French literature, then this is certainly well worth a read.

I chanced across this book when waiting for some female friends who went to see <<Bridget Jones>> at the cinema. I finished book just as the film finished. I'm glad I read this book rather than saw that film.

A flow of consciousness embedded in romantic fatalism. Very feminine writing. It took me on a journey of youthful experimentation, of not quite knowing but knowing, of cultural conflicts, of the exotic Indo-China in that colonial era of a faded dusty yellowness.

Strongly recommended to all those who enjoy the writing of V Nabokov.

...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 [DVD] [1959] 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.

(Note: Review first published at Amazon, USA, on July 17, 2009)