Marguerite Duras: L'Amour (1971)

Marguerite Duras said that her novel L'Amour is 'a book that contains a hundred books, all the books I've written. And also others that other people could have written'. Certainly this will remind readers of her major work Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein, but in particular the style of the much more obscure La Femme du Gange, of which I've only seen the film version so far.

The (imaginary) place S. Tahla of Le Ravissement becomes the equally imaginary S. Thala here, only it's set a number of years after the first novel, and S. Thala has been bombarded (by storms yes, but other things too?), there are fires, sirens, the sea has almost taken over, and the reader is almost all the time on the shoreline, with three mysterious figures: a pregnant woman, a walking man, and a traveller who's staying at a hotel and seems to be preparing himself for suicide.

No one has a name, unless S. Thala is the name of a person, or everyone, but that isn't at all clear, and probably just a throwaway remark made by the traveller. But yes, Duras's books, and especially Le Ravissement, are in here. The traveller has come back after a long time, which suggests Michael Richardson, who left the ballroom, walked out on Lol V. Stein, for the older Anne-Marie Stretter: he goes to a now unused ballroom he visited long ago, and asks the attendant if he remembers the woman on the beach, but she's too far away for recognition.

And how many women are present here, or are we reading about the same one at different times? There's the pregnant woman on the beach, the one the traveller visits in her house, the one who visits him in his hotel room with their(?) two children in the lobby, and the woman (a different one?) on the beach, who recognises the traveller, who has had two children by another man, a musician, and could well be Lol V. Stein. Pick up some pieces, try to fit them together, but you won't manage it: Marguerite Duras's book leaves a great deal for the reader to sort out, indeed invent.

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