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The Lover

Marguerite Duras,

Maxine Hong Kingston (Introduction),

Barbara Bray (Translator)

Start date: March 1, 2017

Finish date: May 31, 2017

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Mar 12, 2017 Elizabeth (Alaska) rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: xx-2017-reps, 1001-books, late-20th-century, kindle, xx-2017-women, women, xx-20th-c-women-read

I am not one who likes a string of declarative sentences. If I am to be interested in either the plot or the characters, there must be interesting prose. This is classed as fiction. It is assumed to be largely autobiographical with the line blurred between fiction and reality. As it was written in the author's declining years, she is removed from the story. Unfortunately, this means the reader is also removed from the story.

The sex scenes are not graphic by today's standards, but there is certa ...more

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Apr 11, 2015 Sam rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: books-of-2016, books-i-own

I think part of why I didn't enjoy this novel was because my expectations going in were not even close to the reality. I tend to like to go into books mostly blind, which is great most of the time, but not so much when you're expecting a tender love story between people from two different worlds, and instead you get a 15-year-old taking on a 27-year-old lover mostly for his money.

The prose is beautiful, there's no denying that Duras was a talented author. I did enjoy the descriptions of her fam ...more

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Apr 17, 2015 Krista rated it it was ok

Shelves: fiction, fiction-award-winner, 1001-read, foreign-translated, coming-of-age, erotica, time-1900-1949, 2015-books-read, 2015-spring-challenge-read, setting-asia

I actually didn't think that this was really high on the erotica scale. I thought that this dealt more with the main characters interactions with her family and how her upbringing and her life with her mother and brothers had long reaching effects on her life.

Some of the bits of prose were lovely. But the book just seemed to jump from scene-to-scene without a lot of plot development. I didn't ever really feel a deep connection with the unnamed narrator, but then I don't know how deep a connectio ...more

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Jan 17, 2016 Maia rated it really liked it

worth reading, intense. Read in french, might have missed bits. The missing-chunks-out style is maddening at first and she spends one quarter getting onto the topic, but stick with it, it works in the end

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