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The adolescent life of Marguerite Duras merged with fact and fiction – A girl of fifteen in 1930s Indochina, her memoirs and reflections of childhood, society, family, and her primitive “loveless” affair.

There is no order in The Lover by Marguerite Duras. Just paragraphs separated, each painting small pieces of memories from one life. There is the childhood in poverty with the open and spacious house; the family with the depressed mother, the ruthless but useless eldest brother, and the delicate younger brother; and then there’s “the Chinaman.” The thirty-something Chinese lover who is her sexual outlet, her financial means, and her rejection of society.

The Lover is written in deep prose, which was flawless. However, I have to say, I did not particularly enjoy the main character. I found her to be a childish young girl who never really grew up despite her adult-like behavior and insistence that she was wiser beyond her years. That and the girl’s ranting against her mother, for whose affection she seemed starved, became quite tiresome, so much so, that I found myself rushing to finish simply to be able to get it over with.

The prose was worth reading and appreciated, the storyline of the girl’s lover and his emotions toward her are written in a deeply genuine manner, but overall I'm glad to be finished.

I personally found the writing (or at least in the Spanish version that I have) to be hideous.Nevertheless, I liked the story so much I read it to the end. I simply adore this story. ( )

I didn't love The Lover, but as a fan of all things Vietnamese I'm glad I read this semi-autobiographical story of Duras growing up in French Indochina. The loose, episodic narrative--about a teenage girl, her unstable family, and her older Chinese lover--requires some comfort with ambiguity as well as patience to put the pieces of the plot together. The narrator somehow manages to be emotionally overwrought and indifferent at the same time; an American reader is likely to find her exceptionally French. But to Duras' credit, The Lover is knowingly brief and often poetic; it feels something like an experimental but successful prose poem. ( )

I loved this novella. The Lover is about the reflections of an older Parisian woman on pivotal moments in her adolescence both in Saigon and Paris. Except, true to life but rare in novels, these events are hazy, misremembered and haphazard and her recollections jump around from memory to aside to self-analysis. I found myself waiting for the things I knew she would not tell me. Duras gives us enough to keep us hooked but leaves you with a great many questions.

Her style is moreish and I really admire the delicate handling of growing up around domestic instability and this child's precociousness and vulnerability.

The Lover is a masterclass in how to do an awful lot with deceptively sparse writing. ( )

The tone of this book is emotionally flatlined. Terror, physical ecstasy, hatred and depression all file past in the same abstracted, languorous fashion: mentioned, but not really written. We know that the early part of this narrator's life was characterized by withdrawal and passive observation and that she has taken to drinking in her middle age (we also know this is a French novella from the end of the 20th century); but these facts don't entirely justify the loosely structured and vaguely experienced narrative.

The few times that the prose seemed to snap into greater focus, were around cherished objects (a fedora, some shoes) or images; but these are static things and however much meaning they are forced to carry, they cannot be as lively as multi-dimensional characters. And "The Lover" is not full of multi-dimensional characters. It has, at most, two. The narrator is somewhat nuanced, the mother is bipolar and everyone else is essentially a drive towards something and a flaw (desire and weakness; power and selfishness; tranquility and terror). I tire of the stereotypical wastrel brother, of the speechless cowering brother and also of the precious and spineless lover himself.

But, I did enjoy this book. It came close to being quite good. I just wish that it flexed more or grappled harder or pulled itself together; though, again, I understand that the narrative style could be interpreted as the logical outcome of the storyteller's upbringing. However, and lastly, I can't really abide by the two or three intrusive semi-portraits of society ladies in France; these seemed poorly integrated and diverting--even the appearance of Hellene in the novella seemed under-managed. If she had not existed as a mute alternative and object of desire, she might have been a more interesting collection of words.Finally, if the girl's age were given as 18 or older, I doubt the book would have been so successful. ( )