Book Review: "The Lover, Wartime Notebooks and Practicalities" by Marguerite Duras

I heard about this book called The Lover by Marguerite Duras in another book entitled Around the World in 80 Books by David Damrosch. She was under the section on France. When I read the article he had written about her book The Lover, I was absolutely in love. It was like being in love with a book without actually having read it. I searched out the book and found a good price for three of her works: The Lover, Wartime Notebooks and Practicalities. I was just counting on my lucky stars that I was going to enjoy this author and what she had to say. I have to be honest, I didn't enjoy her at all - I absolutely adored her.

The Lover is a book about a teenager who falls in love with a 27 year old Vietnamese Man in Indochina during the various wartime eras over there. The year is 1929, and in this autobiographical account of being fifteen, we look at the author through her lens of being the daughter of a bipolar mother who is also a financially-unstable widow alongside her older brothers and her younger brother who each have a protective quality over her but ultimately, she scares them into some form of submission towards her wants and needs. One part I liked about this is how the book closes off, there seems to be a catharsis about it, but altogether it isn't at all. Someone dies, it is stated via suicide and our narrator takes a moment to recollect it, coming to a conclusion that satisfies the reader but doesn't really end the mission of self-discovery.

Wartime Notebooks at heart, is an exploration of the French Colonial Empire and its hold on the Indochinese world. It is a fascinating account of a woman travelling without the proper purpose but, there is some want of exploration there. From her strange trips around her homeland to speech-filled tension of the chapter on the war. This is a part of the book that, if the reader should read and understand, will then in turn understand all of Marguerite Duras' writings.

Practicalities was probably one of my favourite parts of this book because it talks about so many different subjects. Written towards the latter years of her life, Marguerite Duras discusses everything from men to alcohol. She talks about her own alcohol usage and the way in which men, if one is not fond of them truly, are completely unbearable. Outspoken, somewhat cynical but also dangerously profound, Marguerite Duras seeks to make the reader understand the ideas that flow through her writing: life and death, domesticity and depression, the ideas of being a true person who is free and what it means to be confined to a space, shunned and neglected. These essays are amongst some of the most profound I have read on life from the latter 20th century and Marguerite Duras is truly a genius for writing them.

In conclusion, I think it is very lucky that I picked up that book entitled Around the World in 80 Days because of the fact now, I have so much more to read. I hope for my sake that I enjoy these other books just as much as I enjoyed these three, fairly short, writings by Marguerite Duras. From this Everyman's Library edition, I have managed to learn so much about her from not only reading her books but notes on translations and a lengthy introduction about her life and times. It has left me stunned, amazed and yet, I am still trying to adjust back into my own world. I read the whole thing in one sitting.