748. The Lover

The Lover
Marguerite Duras
1984
Around 120 pages

Thank you Marguerite Duras for giving me hope. Duras published this novel when she was 70. That means I have at least 42 years to come up with something worthwhile to put on the page. Of course, she had a long and successful career before this, but that's irrelevant.

There are two published versions of The Lover: one written in the form of an autobiography, the other, called The North China Lover and released in conjunction with the film adaptation. I read the first version, because that version felt more self-contained. In 1929, a 15-year-old girl is traveling by ferry across the Mekong Delta, returning from a holiday to her boarding school in Saigon. She attracts the attention of a 27-year-old son of a Chinese business magnate, the heir to a fortune. He strikes up a conversation with the girl, and she becomes his lover.

Duras is a beautiful writer, but I found myself largely unmoved by the action of the story. Maybe we have seen this plot one too many times. Teenage girl gets seduced by much older man, and nobody is really asking why the man is attracted to a child in the first place. But I love some of her phrases, with one of my favorite quotes coming from the very first page: "very early in my life it was too late."

So another story about a loss of innocence that didn't make much of an impression, but passed enjoyably enough.

RATING: ***--

Interesting Facts:

Translated into 43 languages.

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