The narrator's French family is bound in poverty and unhappiness, the father dead, an older brother whom she fears, a younger whom she loves, a mother whom she loves, pities and dislikes. This is in Saigon, where Miss Duras was born and grew up. She was picked up by a rich young Chinese man in his limousineĪnd went with him to his apartment, where he became her lover. She describes herself now as ''ravaged,''Įmotionally dead, and it is because of the intensity with which she felt then, at her initiation into sexual love when she was 15 1/2, a high-school student in Indochina. She is looking back on an episode of her adolescence and its emotional consequences on her life since. The story is told by a narrator, now in her 60's, whose life resembles in some details Miss Duras's own. They deal successfully with strong basic themes of erotic love and death. Thomas's ''White Hotel'' are accessible, both because of the interesting narrative particulars - one might say the surface of the works - and because ''The Lover,'' in this fine translation by Barbara Bray, is accessible the way Thomas
THE LOVER DURAS FREE SUMMARY FULL
But in her small, perfect, new novel, she has found in reworking material she has used before - materialĮvidently full of personal meaning - a felicitous and masterly balance between formalism and powerful emotional effect. It is true that in much of her work, Miss Duras uses obscurity - or at least manner and formal control - to combat or disguise her tendency to be melodramatic and sentimental. On the whole do not get on with the French novel, and certainly not with the French experimental writers with whom Marguerite Duras is most often linked. $11.95.īEYOND a certain vogue, as I remember, for ''Bonjour Tristesse'' and Albert Camus, a pious regard for Proust and Flaubert, and an occasional attempt at something almost-English, like the fussy, Gothic work of Michel Tournier, Americans She has completed a new novel entitled ''Bad News.'' Section 7, Column 1 Book Review Deskīy Diane Johnson Diane Johnson is a novelist and critic whose most recent book was a biography of Dashiell Hammett. June 23, 1985, Sunday, Late City Final Edition
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