Marguerite Duras: Suzanna Andler (1968)

Suzanna Andler has very few characters: the eponymous protagonist (about forty); her present lover Michel Cayre (thirty or thirty-five and married); very briefly,  her friend (and once one of her husband's many lovers, Monique Combès; and Rivière the estate agent. The place is Saint Tropez and Suzanna is deciding if she wants to rent a property for the month of August.

Her husband Jean will have the last say in the matter, and price isn't really important to him. But we only encounter him once, just his voice over the phone, and he won't be staying in the property long: their marriage is more or less in name only, held together by their children in their home in Paris, while he drifts from one relationship to the next. But he makes sure Suzanna is (reasonably) comfortable.

What comes over here are the usual preoccupations of Duras: lies, extramarital relationships, despair, suicide, death, madness, the family, etc. But we are a very long way from her experimental cycle indien.

Marguerite Duras called Suzanna a woman of the world, a person who greatly interested her but whom she had never seen in person, only at a distance in restaurants on the Nationale 7 (near the Côte d'Azur). She is hidden behind her bourgeois class, conventions, idées reçues, etc. Here, she's released in Saint Tropez, but without all the the familial and general social trappings, and she is exposed to pain, despair, and, Duras adds, even death.

My Marguerite Duras posts:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

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