Hemilya read and liked Elizabeth's review of The Lover:

"I first read this book in high school. Looking back, I would consider that too young for the subject matter, except that is how old Duras was when the events of the book took place. It's well established that the book is fairly autobiographical. In f...more I first read this book in high school. Looking back, I would consider that too young for the subject matter, except that is how old Duras was when the events of the book took place. It's well established that the book is fairly autobiographical. In fact, when the film version made such a botch of the story, Duras wrote it again in The North China Lover. Unfortunately, the later book doesn't express the same spirit and sense of longing that was in the first. I think she had too much perspective on events by then. The intensity was lost.

The Lover reminds me of Jane Eyre, in a way. The friendship of school girls is replaced by the first experience of passionate love with an older man. That relationship is one of two different types of outcasts finding each other and struggling against society, themselves, and each other throughout the relationship. I read them both the same summer, I think. That's where the similarities end though. Duras has a writing style that is razor thin. She didn't waste sentences and she didn't add unnecessary words to them. It can be jagged sometimes and overwhelmingly pure at others.

I'm struggling to explain why I liked this book when, by subject and politics, friends might be surprised to hear it. Her books, particularly this one, are compelling in a way that allows me to forget some of my problems with them as I read, and to think of them fondly afterwards. I suppose I could give you a feminist critique of all the problems, omissions, deliberate blindness to life's reality, glossing over of real events, etc., but this book doesn't make me want to do that, which may be one of the reasons I've still got the old used copy I bought in high school on my bookshelf.




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Hemilya added a quote:
"Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life." — Confucious

Hemilya added a quote:
"Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up." — Neil Gaiman