Reviews with content warning for Grief - L'amante

Among the books that come to mind from the last century set in the 1920s for me is the to a certain extent autobiographical French novel The Lover by Marguerite Duras. Since its publication in 1984 it could be described as something of a juggernaut having been a best seller and award-winner, translated countless times (English edition by Barbara Bray) and further adapted to film and comic format. Just in 2019 it also made the list of 100 Best Books by Women in Translation. Interminable perhaps because The Lover raises all kinds of questions while also making one realise the answers are not always clear or simple.

Composed of wandering recollections congregating around the affair straddling multiple boundaries of a French teenager whose family was persuaded to settle in Cochinchine (now Southern Vietnam) but, finds no fortune and an older affluent Chinese heir in 1929, to paraphrase: an imaginative memory of time rendered into life. It’s also a novella which is about land and people of elsewhere who inhabited it, childhood, maturity, class, complicated families, loss, return and writing.

Interesting enough material, The Lover would be additionally adapted into a film released in 1992 directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud. But, by no fault of the actors this is one title where I prefer the book. The film also had effects on Duras. A filmmaker herself who had previously in mind a screenplay but apparently experienced some disagreements with Annaud, she revisited The Lover in more of a playwright format as The North China Lover published near the film’s release. Personally, in this case too much thought on comparisons doesn’t give reasonable returns. It’s pretty cultural the sort of elucidation one may come up with anyway.

As much as sexual desires and passion may be in the pages (some of a sapphic reverie too btw) of The Lover, there is further the dreams and love of writing. The naissance of that passion. Of a girl growing up in adverse circumstances, a woman in later years reflecting on memory. I recommend the slim book, with a glass of wine if one is so inclined.

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