Après avoir finie ce livre je m'ai mis à penser qu'il y a quelques mois auparavant j'ai essayé de lire les 2 œuvres majeures de Jonathan Frazen, mais au fin, il y était impossible, j'ai trouvé les personnages et l'ambiance complètement insupportables et c'était claire que je ne irais pas dépenser des jours de ma vie dans ces univers misérables (je pense faire un jour une dernière tentative Franzen, avec Purity). J'ai aussi fait un effort pour lire Et rien d'autre de James Salter, mais au fin de 20 pages, il y était évident que la vie de Philip Bowman n'avait aucun intérêt pour moi. Ça m'a fait penser en Donna Tartt: j'ai lu tout le Chardonneret, mais boeuf... tout ça pour dire que, en contraste, ce livre de Marguerite Duras, la troisième (!) variation littéraire au tour des mêmes mémoires de sa adolescence et sa découverte vertigineuse de l'amour, ça c'est l'art et une réalisation extraordinaire.

Ce que me semble c'est surtout que ici les personnages et ses histoires sont honnêtes, vraisemblables, pluri-dimensionnelles.

Merci le ciel pour Marguerite Duras, sa vie intéressante, son art — et ses vérités.

Duras réécrit L’Amant lorsqu’elle apprend la mort de celui-ci, et livre une version plus désespérée et tragique de cette histoire, elle qui n’avait jamais imaginé que son ancien amour puisse mourir. Le style très haché et déconstruit donne toujours autant de rythme mais semble aussi parfois très mécanique et froid. Dans ses envolées lyriques, Duras fait mouche. Le reste nous tient un peu à distance, malgré la fièvre de cette liaison.

Pædofili og incest er begge elementer, der indgår i denne historie, og lad mig gøre det klart: jeg er ikke specielt begejstret. Hvis man ser bort fra dette (Som om, man kan.. men lad os nu lade som om) er jeg imponeret over, hvordan personernes øjne i denne historie ikke er tørret ud endnu. De græder HELE TIDEN.
Jeg læser denne historie i en historisk kontekst med fokus på Indokina, men wow... jeg hader alle personerne i denne historie (Thanh virker okay, indtil han begynder at kysse 'barnet' (med fokus på BARN)). Jeg ved, at den er baseret på rigtige mennesker, men det gør det langt fra bedre. Faktisk gør det det hele værre.
Bogen er skrevet smukt og beskrivelserne af sceneriet er interessante, men udover det: 1/5. ville ikke genlæse, men jeg er sikkert stadig nødt til at lave min store opgave på den.

This was a complete let down. I was looking for an AMWF love story and what I got was a Chinese pido and incest. I did not realize this was going to read like a play, I hated this format. I wanted a story not directions from the author on how people should interact. This doesn't feel like a real-life story. There was just too much going on and nothing was interesting. A major let down.

Looking back on the time when I first became interested in Duras' The Lover, I can see how this interest was highly influenced by the complex alienation and exhaustion I was operating under. I was raised and continue to live in a very unique sector of the US that has a far greater Asian population than usual for that country, and nascent experiences with romantic relationships were largely of an interracial nature that was rarely, if ever, reflected in the annals of the sort of literature that I was, at that time, using as a life raft of self worth. So, to find The Lover, a colonial Lolita with far more complicated aspects of race and Orientalism, was a beacon to me, and is likely why I pushed through the novel narrative structure and themes that, if published today by someone without Duras' standing, would likely be far more controversial than it was way back when. Reading this, the purported sequel, a number of years later at twice the age of the narrative's protagonist was rather informative as I watched my US-bred, Puritanical/abstinence centered sex ed trained self throw alarm bells out and then subside as I continued to traverse through the prepubescent sex work, incest, and glib, practically flattered, auctioning off of girls for a family's welfare. Amongst all this were true spots of beauty, not to mention that I continue to value literature such as this that has an immense potential for generating analysis in academic directories. Even now, having finished the book several days ago, I feel the urge to watch at least one of those highfalutin types of films with their weird Frenchy focuses that this particular work is overtly framed as an uber-literary script for, but the story, for all its taboo material, is nothing special, and the build up of images was uprooted from its crescendo by a rather heavy handed ending. Perhaps that was what really happened in Duras' experiences: all I know is that it might have made for a better movie, but in prose, it lays it on rather thick.

Much as I've seen talk of the 21st century bringing back the Roaring 20s, the 20th century really will, in all its horror and wonder, never happen again. Here we have an esteemed author recounting a bildungsroman that is almost always framed as being destined to end in trauma, disease, and other forms of ruin, and yet the story is one that observes the taboo nature and then, in a sort of conscientious blitheness, moves on. Beyond that, the landscape and invoked balances of light and shadow and sound do appeal, and when Duras chooses to, she is capable of conjuring magically nostalgic vistas of a world that will never again exist, for even if an apocalypse resets humanity's clockwork, it won't fully wipe out the impact interconnected technologies and consequent burgeoning international anti-bigotry awareness has had in the hundred years or so that separated this work's child figure from the modern day. I won't deny how visually seductive the work is, but the impact that poverty, racism, and lack of comprehensive sexual education have on the mores of the work is physically tangible, and the fact that Duras survived and even prospered is not something that happens often, judging by how few other authors have dwelt on such a life and reached such a height of esteem. A gorgeously crafted dagger riddled with tetanus, rabies, and the devil knows what else, then, and this time around, Duras wasn't as successful at seducing me into appreciating the interplay of memory and form as she was seven years ago. Indeed, at this point, I believe I've had my fill of her works in general, so until some 1001-type list or other form of elitist indoctrination succeeds in swaying my reading choices, I'm content with leaving this author and her retold stories behind.

It was by fortune that I acquired this book out of a desire to give a long ago experienced woman in translation a second go and by fortune that I ended up reading it this year (a challenge required reading a book published during one's birth year, which in my case is far more contemporary than the challenge creators intended). After all these coincidences, I'm content to leave a record of how I responded to this singular work that, in many ways, was comparatively more informed and straightforward when juxtaposed with its prequel: something that can also be said when comparing I as a reader to my self of 2013. However, loss of mystique entails less opportunity for those who engage with this sort of material to lie to themselves, and in these fraught times of presentation and taboo, some have taken it upon themselves to scold those who write about their experiences for being explicitly honest about them. As it stands, this work covers ground similar to that of Bastard of Carolina, albeit with more Oriental ghosts and their residual poison (just look at Euro/Neo-Euro mass media treatment of a particular illness in China while (white) US anti-vaxxers bring the tremendously more contagious measles back from the grave on an international scale). With that, it's simply time to move on, until I next feel the need to revisit an author who, for lack of a better term, continues to haunt me.

Did some research into the origins of this work and discovered that Duras felt the film adaptation of her original novel L'Amant (The Lover) was "overly aesthetic," and that this work (The North China Lover) was her re-interpretation of that film. The novel reads like a screenplay but has the same purely observational, non-judgmental writing style of L'Amant.

Fue un golpe de suerte encontrar este libro en perfectas condiciones a un precio de regalo. Es mi segundo libro de Duras y en lo personal creo que tiene una hermosa manera de escribir. Es simple pero tan humana que te llega directo al corazón.
No he leído el libro del amante, pero creo que esta versión es fabulosa. La historia fue curioso y los personajes extrañamente humanos. He quedado prendada de este libro. Una historia real de primera mano llena de detalles y conversaciones simples y algo banales que complementan la atmósfera.

Маргьорит Дюрас пише "Любовникът от Северен Китай" през 1991 година, защото не харесва филма на Жан-Жак Ано "Любовникът" по едноименния и роман от 1984 година, удостоен с Гонкур.
Жанрът е роман- сценарий. Фрагментарен е, но всъщност не повече от другите и романи. Дюрас е автор и на пиеси, които все още не съм чела. Тя има силен усет за сценичното и кинематографичното и това е една от причините да помня толкова ярко сцени от книгите и.
Маргьорит Дюрас, е родена и израсла в Индокитай, и тя няма никога да забрави драматичното си детство там. И как би могла? Баща и умира, когато е едва на 4. Майка и се бори смело и се опитва да осигури по-добро бъдеще за трите си деца, Маргьорит и двамата и братя, като влага всичките си спестявания в закупуването на негодна, постоянно заливана от Меконг земя. Колониалните чиновници от кадастъра я измамват и семейството е напълно разорено..
Защо ви разказвам биографията на авторката? Защото и тази, както почти всички нейни книги, е автобиографична, но не от този линеен тип автобиографии, а като поток от спомени и подновени опити на Дюрас да разбере това свое непонятно детство. То приключва на 14 с любовта и към един манджурец, връзка скандална и отчаяна, белязана от болката на раздялата, от срама заради унизителната бедност на тези изпаднали бели, позора от това бащата на любовника ти да изплаща дълговете на брата наркоман и крадец. "Малката", както е наречена в романа, изпитва толкова болезнено съчувствие към "братчето", по-малкият си брат Поло, психически увреден вследствие постоянните побои на злонравния си брат Пиер, въплъщение на "чистото зло".
Няма място за свян, когато си на дъното. Те приемат пари, все едно "малката" е за продан, всички се страхуват до смърт от онзи, на когото "злото му идва отвътре", и в същото време се обичат като обречени корабокрушенци. Тази драма се разиграва край величавата река, в зноя и сред пороите на мусона.
Срамът, страхът, насилието, безумието, безпомощността се сливат със страстта и любовта, един възел от силни емоции, които ще бележат "малката" и тя ще го носи докрая на живота си.
Сърцето ми се къса, когато чета за 14 годишното момиченце с крехко, недоравито телце, с двойно преоценени ламени обувки и нелепа сламена шапка, защото майката изобщо не се интересува от дъщеря си, обича единствено сина си престъпник. А малката е безстрашна и безсрамна. В книгата има сцени, които може и да ви шокират. Опитайте се да разберете тези хора, които живеят на ръба! Дюрас никога не успява да разбере себе си, нито майка си, нито красивия си, невероятно зъл брат. Тя ги възприема като природни сили. Историята на нейното семейство и любовта и с Китаеца ще бъдат разказвани и изследвани отново и отново и така тя никога няма да умре.

I was entranced with The Lover when I read it in college, and curious as to how this novel-as-screenplay would feel to me almost a decade later.

Duras is a sensuous, spare and intimate writer whose prose hints at meaning that only she knows fully. I found myself reading and re-reading The North China Lover to discover the truth - did she have an affair with her brother? Was she in love with her North China lover? or was she prostituted?

Details that had been forgotten were revealed, and the melancholy tone lingered well after the final pages.

Was far more thoughtful then the LOVER and gave the detail that the first book and movie missed. Especially about the father of the Chinese man.

جميلة كما هو متوقع... تكنيك فرنسي محض، ولكنه عميق جدا. حب، ألم، شغف، استعمار، لا اظنه ببعيد عن السيرة الذاتية للكاتبة.

Me gustó aún más incluso que "El Amante". Qué bonito obsesionarse con Marguerite Duras por esta historia