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tonybz's review against another edition
3.0
My rating is not reflective of the quality of the writing, the inherent craft of its creation (translated), or its artfulness, or its possible importance in the author's work - all of which could be argued. I just did not enjoy it. (In the same way one can respect some recognized painters, but not particularly like their work, personally).
kyatic's review against another edition
2.0
"He said, 'Look here, leave it all, you're building on ruins.'"
This is like a well-written postcard to a distant relative, in that I don't think it actually says anywhere near as much as it thinks it does, but it says it very nicely. A staging of this as a play might work a lot better than the novella, because it's about 90% dialogue and 10% stage direction (she moved here, he did this, she moved there) and there's not a lot of visuals. It also does that really, really annoying thing that a lot of Beckett-esque texts do, which is having characters repeat themselves multiple times to make sure that you know that what they're saying is important or foreshadowing.
I have to admit that I have no real idea what this book is about. It's completely and deliberately inaccessible. It's anti-communist (or at least anti-soviet), that much I can tell, but I'm not entirely sure why; something about individuality and labour. It uses Jewishness and Jewish identity in a very odd way for an author who is not Jewish, and uses the iconography of Auschwitz to represent a greater and more universal sense of not-belonging, which I found a bit iffy. Duras is clearly an author who doesn't shy away from things that people might find a bit iffy, but I honestly don't think that Auschwitz imagery like this is particularly successful because it is so far removed from any experiences that the vast majority of us will ever have or be exposed to. Saying that 'we are all from Auschstaadt' doesn't actually mean as much as Duras might think it does, because none of us knows what being from or at Auschwitz would have been like or would have done to a person. Although, perhaps the inaccessibility of that experience is somehow linked to the inaccessibility of this book as a whole. I don't know. I'd have to reread the book to get a better insight into that, and honestly, I have no real intention of doing that. Reading it once was confusing enough.
A further edit would not have gone amiss, as there were several errors in the text. I can look past that ordinarily, but in a text which is already almost impossible to understand and needs very careful reading, the mistakes stand out more, because you do need to focus on absorbing every word and letter, and they are also twice as irksome, because they impede the understanding of an already oblique text. A special mention should probably go to the translator here, as I can imagine that a text as simultaneously dense and delicate as this one would have been a real challenge.
If you like books that are entirely evasive and require multiple readings to penetrate the various layers therein, or if you're a huge fan of Beckett and need your fix of texts in that vein, then go ahead and read this one. If you don't fit into those two niches - which I clearly do not - then do yourself a favour and just don't.
This is like a well-written postcard to a distant relative, in that I don't think it actually says anywhere near as much as it thinks it does, but it says it very nicely. A staging of this as a play might work a lot better than the novella, because it's about 90% dialogue and 10% stage direction (she moved here, he did this, she moved there) and there's not a lot of visuals. It also does that really, really annoying thing that a lot of Beckett-esque texts do, which is having characters repeat themselves multiple times to make sure that you know that what they're saying is important or foreshadowing.
I have to admit that I have no real idea what this book is about. It's completely and deliberately inaccessible. It's anti-communist (or at least anti-soviet), that much I can tell, but I'm not entirely sure why; something about individuality and labour. It uses Jewishness and Jewish identity in a very odd way for an author who is not Jewish, and uses the iconography of Auschwitz to represent a greater and more universal sense of not-belonging, which I found a bit iffy. Duras is clearly an author who doesn't shy away from things that people might find a bit iffy, but I honestly don't think that Auschwitz imagery like this is particularly successful because it is so far removed from any experiences that the vast majority of us will ever have or be exposed to. Saying that 'we are all from Auschstaadt' doesn't actually mean as much as Duras might think it does, because none of us knows what being from or at Auschwitz would have been like or would have done to a person. Although, perhaps the inaccessibility of that experience is somehow linked to the inaccessibility of this book as a whole. I don't know. I'd have to reread the book to get a better insight into that, and honestly, I have no real intention of doing that. Reading it once was confusing enough.
A further edit would not have gone amiss, as there were several errors in the text. I can look past that ordinarily, but in a text which is already almost impossible to understand and needs very careful reading, the mistakes stand out more, because you do need to focus on absorbing every word and letter, and they are also twice as irksome, because they impede the understanding of an already oblique text. A special mention should probably go to the translator here, as I can imagine that a text as simultaneously dense and delicate as this one would have been a real challenge.
If you like books that are entirely evasive and require multiple readings to penetrate the various layers therein, or if you're a huge fan of Beckett and need your fix of texts in that vein, then go ahead and read this one. If you don't fit into those two niches - which I clearly do not - then do yourself a favour and just don't.
jereco1962's review against another edition
4.0
I dig Marguerite Duras. She's both spare (prose) and dense (content), both obvious (two Jews named Abahn) and obscure (recurring discussions of dogs). In this late career novella, she gives us a surreal visit from the younger Sabana and David to the home of the Jew (Abahn #1). They have apparently come to either kill or hold Abahn to be killed by the unnamed "Gringo." Then Abahn number two arrives and what ensues is a coded examination of motives, histories and allegiances that takes the quartet through the wee hours of the morning to an unexpected - and nearly inexplicable - ending. Duras was a master of the open secret - she gives you all you need to know to figure out her puzzle, but the clues aren't in plain sight and the meaning you find in it may be all your own. I'll be turning this one over in my mind for some time to come - and that's as it should be.
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