Marguerite Duras: L'Amant | The Lover (1984)

What Marguerite Duras said about things could definitely vary with her mood, or I think according to the industrial proportions of the wine she's been drinking with Yann Andréa, but at one stage she described L'Amant as 'shit', a beach read ('roman de gare'), and that she wrote it when she was drunk. After decades of novels, though, she scooped the Prix Goncourt in 1984 with this novel, at the age of seventy.

In a way this is a type of replay of Un barrage contre le Pacifique (1950), although much shorter, and with less linearity, different ages of the protagonist being shown, different perspectives of the same person ('I' and 'she'), for instance. In Barrage the mother is a kind of pimp, but not here: she's given a much softer treatment.

But it's not the family itself that's the important thing in L'Amant: it's the relationship between the adolescent girl and her Chinese lover. Her rich Chinese lover, who has a very rich father who owns a great deal of property. Initially, though, the Chinese lover (who's not given a name) sees this white young creature as the only white person on the ferry across the Mekong, but that's her last time, and from then on in she's chauffeured to her lycée.

She also willingly loses her virginity to her Chinese lover, willingly accepting that she is just one of his many conquests, although he loves her. It's a mésalliance of sorts, though, as in spite of his money he's considered inferior because of his race. The girl's elder brother, invited to an expensive meal with the girl's family and on to a kind of night club, doesn't once speak to him, although everything is of course paid for by the Chinese lover, who will also pay for the girl's mother's journey back to Paris.

The relationship between men and women, money, power in its broadest sense, time and age, psychology, sex and what it can pay for, all play their part in a novel that's interesting enough, but surely far inferior to Lol V. Stein. But then, Marie NDiaye's Goncourt-winning Trois femmes puissantes was very much inferior to her Rosie Carpe (which won the 'consolation' Renaudot).

My Marguerite Duras posts:
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Marguerite Duras: La Pute de la côte normande
Marguerite Duras: L'Homme assis dans le couloir
Marguerite Duras: Agatha
Marguerite Duras: Emily L.
Marguerite Duras: Les Yeux bleus cheveux noirs
Marguerite Duras: L'Amant | The Lover
Marguerite Duras: Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein
Marguerite Duras: L'Amante anglaise
Laure Adler: Marguerite Duras
Marguerite Duras: Cimetière du Montparnasse
Marguerite Duras: Un barrage contre le Pacifique
Marguerite Duras: L'Après-midi de Monsieur Andesmas
Marguerite Duras: Les Petits Chevaux de Tarquinia
Marguerite Duras: Le Marin de Gibraltar | The Sailor from Gibraltar
Marguerite Duras: La Douleur | The War: A Memoir
Yann Andréa: Cet amour-là
Marguerite Duras and Xavière Gauthier: Les Parleuses
Marguerite Duras: Savannah Bay
Marguerite Duras: Détruire, dit-elle | Destroy, She Said
Marguerite Duras: L'Amour
Marguerite Duras: Dix heures et demie du soir en été
Marguerite Duras: Le Square | The Square
Marguerite Duras: Les Impudents
Marguerite Duras: Le Shaga
Marguerite Duras: Oui, peut-être
Marguerite Duras: Des journées entières dans les arbres
Marguerite Duras: Suzanna Andler
Marguerite Duras: Le Vice-Consul | The Vice Consul
Marguerite Duras: Moderato cantabile
Marguerite Duras: La Vie matérielle
Marguerite Duras: La Vie tranquille
Marguerite Duras: La Pluie d'été