The Lover by Marguerite Duras
My rating: 3/5 cats
i found myself utterly muted by this book, which is problematic because the book club meets this friday, and they aren’t going to be so dazzled by my bruschetta that i can get away with just hiding behind my tiny jewess and drinking their wine. so i have to think of something.
consulting the reading group handbook by rachel w. jacobsohn, purchased for my final grad school assignment, i learn how to think about literature:
characters and story line: young french girl, older chinese man falling into bed and clinical love without names in indochina.
character’s actions: she has poor unsatisfying home life, he has rich traditional home life. they bang. everything seems muffled by gauze.
reader’s emotional response: unmoved. if the author’s voice is going to be so removed, and the characters aren’t going to feel anything particularly deep, why should i be expected to have emotions? it’s like watching people fucking with a wall in between them, masturbating at each other. resentfully.
narrative: fragmentary, past/present conflation, surface-emotions only. short, poetic musings which are occasionally quite lyrical, but never caught at me.
oh, man, i have zero to say about it. i don’t know – people love this book, but i am not one of them. wish me luck.
readers, thinkers and drinkers jan 2010.
