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3.59 AVERAGE
3.59 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
So powerful and beautiful and sad. It will be another book I will read again. Duras writes a novel of such depth that I will need time to explore each of the characters. The mother is a fascinating portrait as is the elder brother and the Chinese millionaire.
This remained rather opaque for me, which is a problem for a novel that is so much about a romance. It was more interesting for its portrait of an interracial relationship in 1920s Vietnam than for its portrayal of human connection. Interesting and technically admirable but unlikely to be one I recommend.
Why did i become retarded while reading the last few pages
dark
reflective
hopeful
lighthearted
sad
slow-paced
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
A beautiful lyrical meditation.
interesting… pretty controversial but was interesting to read!
It was really interesting to see how the roles reversed in a way of having the white french women be in poverty while the colonized, chinese man is rich and powerful. even when class was an issue for both of them, in the end, it always came down to their appearance and never their money. Need a couple more days and literary analysis to make up my mind on this lolz
It was really interesting to see how the roles reversed in a way of having the white french women be in poverty while the colonized, chinese man is rich and powerful. even when class was an issue for both of them, in the end, it always came down to their appearance and never their money. Need a couple more days and literary analysis to make up my mind on this lolz
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
How to rate this novel, with its beautiful, labyrinthine sentences? This is like what if Lolita told the story, plus racism, but the man still has power from age and money. Duras's story and narration are slippery. What is fiction? It reads exactly like memoir. This is a book about a young girl that adults force into doing their will, then everyone excuses themselves because everybody gets some pleasure or money out of it. I can't read this as a love story. It reads to me as a story of multiple abuses.
ETA after a stranger scolded me on the internet: all honor and power to Duras and her treatment of her younger, fictionalized self. She claims agency, choice, and refuses the label of victim, even as the text is suffused with abuse. And her empathy for the Chinese girl who marries the lover is striking.
AND YET: I refuse to condone or pardon or in any way the MANY adults, (the lover, the school, the mother and brothers) who were part of the intersecting power differentials that took advantage of and used a poor (i.e., not moneyed) 15yogirl for their own ends. Yes, different time, different place, blah, blah, blah. An adult man having sex with a 15yo girl is wrong, full stop. Any "well, buts" make me wince, because they remind me of Woody Allen, Roman Polanski, Jeffrey Epstein, and whatever politician was just quoted as saying he thought the age of consent should be lowered.
Duras uses all her writerly skills to foreground the strength and agency, and weave the abuse in threads of subtext. But the importance of the former doesn't efface the latter. They're all there, which is what makes this book a heady, fascinating, disturbing read. But not, IMO, a romantic one.
ETA after a stranger scolded me on the internet: all honor and power to Duras and her treatment of her younger, fictionalized self. She claims agency, choice, and refuses the label of victim, even as the text is suffused with abuse. And her empathy for the Chinese girl who marries the lover is striking.
AND YET: I refuse to condone or pardon or in any way the MANY adults, (the lover, the school, the mother and brothers) who were part of the intersecting power differentials that took advantage of and used a poor (i.e., not moneyed) 15yogirl for their own ends. Yes, different time, different place, blah, blah, blah. An adult man having sex with a 15yo girl is wrong, full stop. Any "well, buts" make me wince, because they remind me of Woody Allen, Roman Polanski, Jeffrey Epstein, and whatever politician was just quoted as saying he thought the age of consent should be lowered.
Duras uses all her writerly skills to foreground the strength and agency, and weave the abuse in threads of subtext. But the importance of the former doesn't efface the latter. They're all there, which is what makes this book a heady, fascinating, disturbing read. But not, IMO, a romantic one.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Xenophobia, Colonisation