Review: The Lover by Marguerite Duras

Title: The Lover
Author: Marguerite Duras
Pages: 117
Publisher: Pantheon Books

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.

We first meet the character, who could be Duras, could be just a fictitious character, or a mix, in old age. She is speaking, showing us in her brief but complex paragraphs how’s she aged, how she had actually aged long before the years and time had taken it’s course.  These first few paragraphs in the book are the core beauty – they are what draw you in. The story then takes off to the sweltering hot days of summer, the quiet and tense family dinners, the shadow that comes over the mother taking her from her children. Then again the paragraph changes time and place – jumps, it takes a while, but while you read it the story oddly flows. The girl is on the ferry in shoes she can’t remember, a small silk dress, and a man’s hat. A man approaches her nervously and she goes with him, continues to go with him. Everyone turns a blind eye but still scrutinize her. The mother, the brothers, the teachers, the people on the street – everyone watches this young girl and she in turn watches everyone else watch her.

The Lover is written in deep prose, and in a manner as if someone just stopped, stopped everything and observed the world, the lives of others, and their own life from afar. The person lived, took in air but did not live to experience, rather just to write. Doubtless, there is emotion in the book but even that is a sort of observation.

Writing-wise the prose was flawless. The use of the words, the delivery, the impact…I just kept re-read several passages.

I could get it wrong, could think I’m beautiful like women who really are beautiful, like women who are looked at, just because people really do look at me a lot. I know it’s not question of beauty, though, but of something else, for example, yes, something else – mind, for example. What I want to seem I do seem, beautiful too if that’s what people want me to be.

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’s seemed starved , become 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 am glad to be finished.

Book Alert

Title: A Fair Maiden
Author: Joyce Carol Oates
Pages: 176
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

A Fair Maiden by Joyce Carol Oates is a brief novella which spends a summer examining the life of 16-year-old Katya Spivak and her seduction by the 68-year-old Marcus Kidder, a wealthy author and artist. Katya is working as a nanny for the children of a wealthy couple residing in the posh New Jersey Shore community when she meets Kidder, who offers to buy her a piece of lingerie, which he had seen her admiring. However, Katya refuses and as he peruses her she continues to refuse him, while at the same time she becomes more and more drawn to him and into his world.

The story of a young girl and an older mysterious man’s attraction to and seduction of said girl is the storyline of many a different novels, so what makes this one different? Perhaps, it’s Oates herself – her writing, the prose, the underlying mystery of “what does this man really want?” because we all know that in Oates’ work the man simply doesn’t just “love” the girl in the flowery forbidden-love manner. No, Oates, has perhaps incorporated in this oft-told tale a frightening and disturbing human element – something ominous.

I have to say, Oates’ last book, Little Bird of Heaven, which was out just this past September, was not something I could get through, though, having read Oates before, I knew just how explicit her writing could be. Usually, I appreciate her unbashful and honest style which refuses to sugar-coat human nature, emotions, and actions, however I could not bring myself to read her past book for reasons I will not mention here least I ruin the book for someone who’d like to read it. Though, I do wonder – perhaps I’m getting soft…

Anyway, though I find I miss Oates’ stark and brutally honest writing of late and am really looking forward to reading this latest venture by her, Kirkus Review has claimed A Fair Maiden as her “most restrained and hence best.” Restrained? Humm…I wonder how “restrained” she’s become.

Due out – January 6, 2010

Review Citations:
•Kirkus Review (Barnes & Noble – Editorial Reviews)

Teaser Tuesday – The Lover

I am now reading The Lover by Marguerite Duras. The words are so simple but their meaning, their context …so powerful and complex.

He introduced himself and said “I’ve known you for years. Everyone says you were beautiful when you were young, but I want to tell you I think you’re more beautiful now than then. Rather than your face as a young woman, I prefer your face as it is now. Ravaged.” (p.3)

Review: Love and Summer by William Trevor

Title: Love and Summer
Author: William Trevor
Pages: 212
Publisher: Viking Adult (September 17, 2009)

Love and Summer, set in the small farming community of Rathmoye, Ireland, revolves around the lives of Ellie, a shy, orphan young woman raised by the nuns; her husband, Dillahan, whose first name is unknown to us; Florian Kilderry, a young man in the process of uprooting himself; Orpen Wren, a somewhat senile former librarian living in the past, and Joseph Paul Connulty and his sister, Miss. Connulty, who, inseparable as children, now live as cold strangers under the same roof. The novel opens with the funeral of Joseph Paul Connulty and Miss Connulty’s mother, the late Mrs. Eileen Connulty, whose family owns a great portion of the town, and it is at this funeral where Florian Kilderry, passing by, stops and engages Ellie.

Initially, it is with Miss. Connulty that the novel engages the reader. She is a character to be pitied, coming off shrewd and cold when really her sore heart lies in the right place. Miss. Connulty watches from a distance and with a growing, hysterical dread the affections of a young woman, Ellie, in whom she sees a reflection of herself, being “ill-used.”

Ellie is a sheltered young woman, quiet and content living her simple life in a marriage of convenience. She had come to Rathmoye as a housekeeper for the farmer and widower, Dillahan, whose own tragic loss of a wife and child, whom some whisper as an accident and others as a murder, burdens him with guilt and despair. Theirs is an uneventful and predictable existence, neither happy nor sad. However, from her initial meeting with Florian, Ellie sees the possibility of a different life, feels an undeniable draw to him, and fears it. She tries avoiding the inevitable and for her part falls in love. The process is silent – simple. A few chance meetings, a gesture, the mere presence of his company while walking among forgotten ruins and Ellie loses her heart, but not her conscience, for though she engages in the affair Ellie is nagged at all times by what others will think, that her actions are morally wrong, and that her husband may find out. In the end it is her husband’s words, spoken gently, unsurely that turn the course for her, while Florian, who sympathetically and out of guilt had offered her a getaway, waits, wondering how much of himself he’s given to Ellie, and what he’s taken from her.

“It was no more than the truth that he had sought to prolong a friendship which summer had almost made an idyll of. But what he had failed to anticipate was the depth of disappointment its inevitable end would bring. He had allowed the simple to be complicated. He had loved being loved, and knew too late that tenderness in return was not enough” (p.139).

Love and Summer is a tale of ordinary lives written in an extraordinary style. It is a novel which examines the intimate details of the common, plain, and mundane, only to have us realize that within such lives – every life, lie intricate details, meaning, and emotions that make the most seemingly insipid life hauntingly unforgettable. Trevor’s writing, of which this is the first I’ve read, is gentle and clam – unhurried, yet there is an underlying strength which runs throughout the whole tale, an anticipation in the words that mimics the inner turmoil of each life presented – major or minor. It is that, William Trevor’s use of words, which keeps the reader hooked and on edge, though the flow of the novel is mellow like that of an easy current.

An interesting, well-written piece, which, though dull and skim-able at times, is worth reading.

Booking Through Thursday – Blurb

This week on Booking Through Thurday: (Suggested by Jennysbooks) “What words/phrases in a blurb make a book irresistible? What words/phrases will make you put the book back down immediately?”

It is very rare that I base wheatear or not I am going to read a book on it’s book jacket or back-cover blurb. Most often I read reviews online, in magazines, and/or in newspapers, as well as, browse Kirkus, Library Journal, Publisher’s Weekly, and Booklist for recommendations, on which I decide to read a book or not. If and when I resort to back cover or book jacket blurbs I do so only to get an idea of the plot, because generally I find them too glammed-up and mainly for sale purposes – not too objective. Anyway, when I read a review or blurb the phrases that grab my attention are: literary fiction, poetic prose, love story, hauntingly beautiful, lyrical, short, and historical fiction. The phrases that turn me off are: “to save the world,” Oprah’s Book Club (though I’ve read a few but based on their own merit), time-travel, memoir, self-help, coming-of-age, family dynamics, Sci-Fi, and fantasy. Granted there are a few exceptions, after all I have read the Twilight, Harry Potter, and Percy Jackson series, but they are the very rare exceptions usually read becuase I’d like to watch the corresponding movie or upon a friend’s insistence.

Teaser Tuesday – Love and Summer #2

Still on Love and Summer by William Trevor.

She wrote what she had written in her thoughts and the words did not make sense. Looking at them, she knew they would not unless she revealed why they’d been written, unless she confessed that the nuns, who knew her so well, would not know her now, made different by lies of silence and of deception, and being ashamed. (p.96)

Book Alert

Title: Alice I Have Been
Author: Melanie Benjamin
Pages: 368
Publisher: Delacorte Press (Random House)

Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin is a historical fiction novel based on the life of Alice Hargreaves, the inspiration of Charles Dodgson’s (aka Lewis Carrol) Alice in Wonderland. The novel, which is due for release in January 2010, fuses both fact and fiction to recreate the life of Alice Hargreaves and her relationship with the awkward mathematician and Oxford professor, Charles Dodgson. The novel also explores the impact of the fictitious character of Alice upon the life of the real Alice and the similarities and differences between the two.

I find myself quite excited about the release of this book, which was praised by Library Journal as being, “truly a love story.” However, I find my own interest odd. You see, growing up both Alice in Wonderland the movie and book scared me. So much so that I never tried to read the book or watch the movie again – ever, and I STILL haven’t. Yet, it seems the retelling of the life of Alice Hargreaves and Charles Dodgson draws me in. One has to admit the dynamic of Alice and Dodgson’s relationship is one that has been whispered about throughout the literary world, and makes for quite a luring story line. Also, the timing of the book’s release could not have been better as Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, is due on-screen March 2010.

Fictitious this book may be, but I am eager to read it nonetheless. Due out – January 12, 2010.

Review Citations:
• Library Journal 10/15/2009

Love and Summer Notes

“His hope had been to become a priest, but the vocation had slipped away from him, lost beneath the weight of his mother’s doubt that he would make a success of the religious life. In the end her doubt became his own” (p.10).

How true these words are to human nature. We are such influenceable creatures – mold-able, feeding off the energies, ideas, opinions, and thoughts that others have of us, especially that of our families, our loved ones. We fulfill others’ doubts and predictions once we believe them ourselves. Why is that? What drives us to believe of ourselves what others believe, say, or think, especially the negative, the discouraging? When does our own belief in ourselves begin not to matter, where does it go? Why do we relinquish our own beliefs for that of others?

Trevor’s writing (so far) captures the silent and daily, yet monumental flow of human nature, of relationships, and of small gestures that happen, are happening, and which shape us, our lives, and the act of living.

So far, so good.

Teaser Tuesday – Love and Summer

I recently picked up Love and Summer by William Trevor, of which I’ve read only a few pages last week. Since then the story has been circling in my mind – a good sign. I seem to be hooked.

Nothing happened in Rathmoye, its people said, but most of them went on living there. It was the young who left – for Dublin or Cork or Limerick, for England, sometimes for America. A lot came back. That nothing happned was an exaggeration too. (p. 3)

Booking Through Thursday – Discuss

This week on Booking Through Thursday: Each participant could ask a question they’ve wanted to discuss with other readers. Ask about recommendations on ceratin authors, writing styles, and genres you’d like to discuss or try.

Here’s mine:

I have a great interest in translated works and works written in foreign counties or by foreign writers, for example, I loved reading Silk by Alessandro Baricco and The Reader by Bernhard Schlink. The way the words flowed, and the way that the works were written, it was like no other for me. They were written like a work of art, and read like poetry. Reading Silk, in particular, was like reading a dream. It was the first time I’ve read something so beautiful, even if the plot had not been memorable (though it was) the words, the sentences alone were enough.  The words were used sparingly, yet they were poignant and vivid. Alessandro Baricco’s writing is the epitome of poetic novel writing and his Silk, the epitome of just such a novel – the first time I’ve read a novel that can boast that. It is by far the most impressive work and style of writing I have ever had the pleasure of reading. For me it touched something within, something that left a mark on my reading experience – redefined it.

Can you recommend any such work? Have you read a work that reads like poetry? What was it? What work, if any, has redefined your reading experience?