A review by cais
The War: A Memoir, by Marguerite Duras

dark emotional tense fast-paced

5.0

“Sometimes I’m amazed I don’t die; a cold blade plunged deep into the living flesh, night and day, and you survive.”

Duras' writing has a kind of simplicity. It’s also highly stylized. Her style. Like no one else’s. Restrained. Also passionate. 

The many violences of war, internal, external – they continue for some long after a war is officially over. Occupied France, liberated France – little distinction for Duras while she waited & waited to find out if her husband, arrested by the Gestapo, was alive or dead. 

“War is a generality, so are the inevitabilities of war, including death.”

A Resistance fighter, there were times when she expected to be shot. Just around the corner there could be someone waiting for her. She also gave orders for bloodshed, interrogating a collaborator ruthlessly. She felt tenderly towards a member of the Militia whom she helped arrest. Duras writes of her contradictory self without explanation save to say, “It’s inevitable. Inevitable that you should feel drawn to some people and repelled by others.” 

Though she says four of these stories are true & two are inventions, Duras seemed to invent the truths of her life as much as she recalled them. It doesn’t matter, really. What matters here is how she evokes the brutality of war, the fear, the many unknowns, & the inner chaos & brute strength of human feeling.