The Lover

With such intimate tone Marguerite Duras involves us in the story of her childhood. She, daughter of a poor French family in the colonies (South East Asia) has her first romantic experience with a rich Chinese man. Class, gender, ethnicity, uprootedness, relationships, all of that mingles to create a narrative that flows full of power and feeling. Both the nameless narratrice and her lover are outsiders in a country that is not really theirs, both share a moment and both have complex lives. I think anyone who has grown in a home full of conflicts and privations can easily identify with the feelings so passionately set to paper by the author. And anyone else can, too: such is the magic of her prose. The Éditions de Minuit series is rather minimalistic: no prologue, no notes. None are needed.

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.

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.

It's the greatest book and author of this century. It revealed the feeling burried in our hearts for long. It touched our soul by simple words. Each page turned over with the "weep without tears". The picture Marguerite tried to show us is a motionless photo which has been wanned by the history. The story happened in the colonial period again tells us a way to chase for the real love and freeze the love into our mirror.