The Lover - Softcover

3.72

56,449 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060970405 ISBN 13: 9780060970406

Publisher: Harper Perennial

From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Erica Bauermeister\nIt is said old loves can haunt us. The Lover creates this feeling through an atmosphere of shadows, veils, floating memories that came from - was it this boat trip or the last one? from age eight or twelve or thirty? In the end it doesn't matter, for the experience is now embedded, a distinct yet inseparable part of the personality. Marguerite Duras mines her own past to tell The Lover, the story of an adolescent girl growing up in Indochina during the 1930s. The girl is wayward, rebellious; one day, returning to school on the ferry, dressed in gold lame shoes, a man's hat and a silk dress, she encounters the son of a Chinese millionaire. Soon they are involved in the first affair of her life, one she claims has no basis in love for her. He can never marry her - his father has refused - and she says she will leave without regrets. But is that possible? Years later she looks back. By presenting ideas and memories in paragraphs that are literally isolated yet constantly overlapping, The Lover creates a misty world of connections made by emotion rather than logic or chronology, a feeling that lingers after the book itself is closed.

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Review:

"An exquisite jewel of a novel, as multifaceted as a diamond, as seamless and polished as a pearl."
--"Boston Herald"
"A vivd, lingering novel...a brilliant work of art."
--Cleveland "Plain Dealer"

"Powerful, authentic, completely successful . . . perfect."
--The New York Times Book Review

"An exquisite jewel of a novel, as multifaceted as a diamond, as seamless and polished as a pearl."
--Boston Herald

"A vivid, lingering novel . . . a brilliant work of art."
--Cleveland Plain Dealer

From the Back Cover:

'Saigon, 1930s': a poor young French girl meets the elegant son of a wealthy Chinese family. Soon they are lovers, locked into a private world of passion and intensity that defies all the conventions of their society.

A sensational international bestseller, and winner of Frances’ coveted Prix Goncourt, 'The Lover' is disturbing, erotic, masterly. Here is an unforgettable portrayal of the incandescent relationship between the lovers, and of the hate that slowly tears the girl’s family apart.

'The Lover' has been made into a major film, directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud and starring Jane March and Tony Leung. An alternative version of the events described in the novel is given in Marguerite Duras’s 'The North China Lover', also published by Flamingo.

“Rarely have I read a novel so flawlessly written”
SPECTATOR

“Very beautiful, highly intelligent, enjoyable and original”
SUNDAY TIMES

“Perfect, a 'tour de force' ... accessible in the way Thomas Mann’s 'Death in Venice' or D.M. Thomas’s 'The White Hotel' are accessible ... dealing successfully with the strong themes of erotic love and death.”
NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

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