Marguerite Duras: Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein | The Ravishing of Lol V. Stein (1964)

'Manon' is a patient Marguerite Duras once met in a psychiatric hospital, and to some extent the Lola Valérie Stein of the title of this novel is very loosely based on her. Not, though, that this novel is entirely (or even partly) about a mad woman. Indeed, as the very uncertain plot progresses, the truth becomes increasingly blurred, to such an extent that most of my statements here could be suffixed by a one-word sentence: 'Perhaps.'

The truth is elsewhere, although there at least seem to be some definites in this story, which  appears to be set in a vague U.S.A, although later incarnations of the morphing story (in the cinema) usually point strongly to Normandy. Lol V. Stein lives in S. Tahla and is engaged to be married to Michael Richardson; she goes to a ball at T. Beach casino, where her fiancé dances with an older woman, Anne-Marie Stretter, and he leaves with her and Lol is left with her best friend Tatania Karl. Lol V. Stein is devastated, but tries not to show it.

Traumatised, Lol V. Stein takes some months to 'recover' and then marries Jean Bedford, they move to U. Bridge for ten years, have three daughters, and then return to S. Tahla, to the home where Lol V. Stein's parents lived. The children are no problem as the couple have money to employ servants. But barely a quarter of the novel has passed: most of the other three quarters concerns the reconstruction of the past.

Reconstruction (by memory), obsession, paranoia, insanity (?), a possibly unreliable narrator, etc, all follow. Lol V. Stein goes for walks, thinks about the events at the ballroom leading up to her ten-year-old trauma, follows Tatiana with her lover to l'Hôtel des Bois, later meets Tatiana and her husband Pierre Breuger, who's with his friend Jacques Hold, Tatiana's lover, who also turns out to be the narrator.

And the narrator  is not omniscient, imagines things, conjures things up, so how much of this is the reader to believe? Tatiana and Lol seem to merge at times: the same person, or is Jacques Hold, or Lol, or indeed Tatiana, deforming reality to serve unknown ends? Not that reality can in any way be defined here, partly because Lol's reality is part of her madness (if she is mad), partly because she doesn't fit into any framework, because she's part of a jigsaw that will never make a full picture, only (at best) a distorted vision of what this book is about.

Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein is certainly Marguerite Duras's most complicated novel, and it is also most probably her best. Paradoxically, she thought it unpublishable, but then there are many paradoxes surrounding Duras, who is undoubtedly one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.

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