Me encantó, en verdad. Lo amé de principio a fin. Ese lazo entre "la niña" y "el chino", ese amor imposible, crudo... y a la vez tan puro. Estamos ante una auténtica historia de amor, ante un amor tan intenso y absorbente, que por muchos momentos, casi podría calificarse como una obsesión, como un amor unilateral.

No sé ustedes, pero para mí, el hecho de que nuestros protagonistas fueran tan centrados y realistas, al saber que su relación no tenía futuro a largo plazo, me resultó a la vez, encantador y desgarrador.

Sin duda en un futuro no muy lejano volveré a repetir la lectura de esta historia de la pluma de Marguerite Duras.

The novel that came in my very fat Gallimard collection of Duras' works is L'Amant de la Chine du Nord, which, as it turns out, is not L'Amant. And here I was thinking people and translators just shortened the title for convenience. Oups.

I was puzzled in digging around Goodreads reviews of The Lover and finding that that novel is narrated in the first person - not in third-person pronouns, as is this later, longer book. Aha. So they say that The North China Lover is the screenplay-ish, deeper-ish rewrite of the original, which came about after Duras was unsatisfied with the film edition of The Lover. (Yeah, I probably would be, too. Have you seen that movie poster? Okay, so it was 1992, but come on, this woman did Hiroshima Mon Amour. You can't just give something Duras writes bad screen treatment.)

L'Amant de la Chine du Nord is not a screenplay. It is prose amplified cinematically. Inversely, screen directions, though sparse, are written lovingly, unnecessarily eloquently for a screenplay. It all works: the barrenness of the language woks, the repetition, the hypnosis, the beautiful, stark anonymity, the purity of elle and lui.

I don't know what I'll think of the actual Lover when I'll read it. Maybe I'll find it unfulfilling and saccharine. Maybe I'll think it the superber work. Will the same pain be there - the pain that transmits from writer to reader and leaves a little furrow between the reader's eyebrows, a physical wince, a cringe? For it is present here, in the story of l'enfant and son amant. The injustice so great that it hurts, the terror so stark that it hurts, the love and desire so desperate that it hurts. All that, panting, sweating in the land of the typhoons and the rains, and the colonizers suffering in their self-made heart of darkness, at the monetary mercy of the colonized.

Duras' style is contagious; it made me want to write extensively in French. There were many bits I admired, but the ones that stuck with me most are here:

-Et un jour on mourra.
-Oui. L'amour sera dans le cercueil avec le corps.
-Oui. Il y aura les livres au-dehors du cercueil.
-Peut-être. One ne peut pas encore savoir.
Le Chinois dit:
-Si, on sait. Qu'il y aura des livres, on sait. Ce n'est pas possible autrement.

Puis:

-Et s'il n'y a pas de douleur?
-Alors tout sera oublié.

una novela sobre el deseo que honestamente menudo tema ¿no?....personalmente me encanta en cualquiera de sus manifestaciones pero este encima based on a true story!!!se supone
así lo cuenta: 'Iban a separarse. Ella recuerda qué difícil, cruel, era hablar. Las palabras eras inencontrables tan fuerte era el deseo. No habían vuelto a mirarse. Habían evitado manos, miradas. Había sido él quién había impuesto aquel silencio. Ella dijo que aquel silencio suyo, sólo suyo, las palabras eludidas debido a aquel silencio, incluso su puntuación, su distracción, aquel juego también, lo infantil de aquel juego y de sus llantos, todo aquello habría podido ya señalar que se trataba de un amor' pfff mirarse y hablar es tan dificil sometimes
pero encima acompaña el libro con anotaciones sobre cómo convertirlo en un película, hay algo reconfortante en la necesidad de controlar el relato sobre un amor propio
pf es que me ha encantado todo....marguerite duras...pues mi nuevo idol

Maggie Duras was a hot little firecracker, giving up her 14-year-old stuff to the family, the natives, and so on.

But seriously, folks....

This is an expanded recast of a tale Duras had already told in the earlier, shorter and much better autobiographical novel, n  The Lovern, and although this one starts off just as beautifully and has lovely bits throughout, it gradually becomes stultifyingly repetitive and dull and fizzles out.

The earlier version, much more internalized, focused, concentrated and concise, was a far finer distillate -- dreamy and swoon-inducing throughout -- whereas this version, with its more removed and distant perspective, conventional linear progression, ampler narrative and autobiographical detail, and extended dialogue passages saps the material of its poetic power and essence. This may seem counterintuitive, but truth is not necessarily to be had in piling on more and explicit detail; and I would challenge anyone to do a side-by-side comparison of the two versions to prove my assertions. The earlier version had more heart and replicated the lover/narrator's non-linear internal thought processes which made the reader feel closer to the mind of the storyteller, of the teller's thoughts. I cared and felt when I read that. Not so much with this one.

The intrusion into the narrative of what seem to be instructions for filmmakers to follow in the filmed version of the story came off as a tad crass to me, as though I was reading a work of art one minute and a "property" the next.

One thing I did like about this version is that the child's family is treated more sympathetically, especially compared to the movie version where their pettiness is almost two-dimensional.

The question for me is: Which version comes closest to the aching sense of longing, the essence of wistful memory? For me, it is the first version.

I really wanted to like this and did, for about a hundred pages, but eventually found myself whittling it down from four stars to three stars to two stars.

In essence, I thought this was a case of more is less.

This beautiful, sad book is also an exquisite movie that I have seen several times and will see again. The version of the book that I have read must be later than the original as it is footnoted throughout with ideas for a film of the story.... so, I don't know quite where the two knit together but they are both..... extra-ordinary - (not EXTRAORDINARY with lots of !!!!!! afterwards, but a quiet 'extra' in front of 'ordinary' - not because it does not deserve accolades but because, in our society, we tend to scream such accolades and this book/film should never be expressed with words that scream.)

The movie is absolutely exquisite in its delicious sensuality and in its depiction of SouthEast Asia with all its own stunningly sensuous beauty.

The book is beautiful too, more in-depth with its story behind the erotica.... the fractured family of the Child: her opium-addicted and dangerous older brother; her bright but fearful younger brother; her ineffectual mother who is overwhelmed by many things, among them her fear of her older son and her star-crossed love for him - her first child;... And then there is the adopted son from 'the forests of Siam', who protects the mother and the little brother and loves 'the Child'; and the Child, whose own budding sexuality is played out all over the place - as is so often true of us when we are young, but is so taboo that it is never, ever talked about, never, ever expressed as Duras expresses it - And then, of course, there is "the Chinese". All these lives entwine and draw apart and entwine again, like a slow, mesmerizing dance from beginning to end.

This book draws the reader in in a way that is hard to encapsulate.. as clearly I have not been able to do.. .... It is entrancing, poignant, tender and hard. Completely captivating and richly alluring....

No me ha gustado la forma en que está narrado, muy confusa, hace que no me llegue la historia, no me transmite nada.
No entiendo la necesidad de Duras de reescribir esta historia y de esta forma.

I was first acquainted with Duras' work after watching Hiroshima mon amour, the film by Alain Resnais for which she had written the screenplay. I was sixteen at the time, and our History teacher, who was from France, made us watch it. I was absolutely enthralled by the language of the film, the language of Duras. Three years later, as I was passing by our college's book store, I noticed L'amant de la Chine du Nord was being sold for a French class, and bought it (although it wasn't being taught in my own French class).

It is the first book I read this year, having finished it on January 2nd. As I understand it, Duras rewrote her earlier work L'amant as she was disappointed with how its film (directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud) turned out, and it is the reason why the updated L'amant has many footnotes and passages regarding filmography: "en cas de cinéma..." or "dans le cas d'un film..." she writes. She gives directives in the story on how to film a certain scene, from which angle. Her footnotes also contain elements about the caracters from the novel and what became of them, like Hélène Lagonelle.

Duras' style is wonderful and fresh, and if read aloud is even better (obviously well-punctuated, with the right emphasis on the right words). Very rich in imagery, very to-the-point and poignant, it's what made me want to read the book in the first place and what pushed me to finish it.

Honestly, I wasn't very interested in the story. Some parts of it still remain very obscure to me. The lovemaking scenes I found very endearing and well-written, but after so many of them they became a drag. I was also surprised at the apparent incest between the child and her brother Paulo, and how hypersexual the said child was for her age. I didn't feel a connection to any of the caracters, maybe perhaps a bit of pity for the mother, who was so foolish with her eldest son and so blinded by her love for him.

Perhaps if I read the original L'amant, I'll feel more enthralled by the story of a fifteen year-old child and her much older Chinese lover.

Parfois tu vas bien puis tu couches avec ton ex et il te passe son exemplaire de l’amant de la chine du nord de duras puis tu pleures toutes les 10 pages car il te manque et que ses annotations c’est comme lui qui te guide personnellement à travers le roman et que vous partagiez un seul cerveau laisse moi entrer dans ta TETEEEE non en vrai si tu lis ca reviens ca peut plus durer non je plaisante tu sais quoi je suis heureux que tu sois en couple en vrai reviens toi et moi cetait special bebew

J’ai enlevé une étoile car l’inceste mais sinon oklm

d'une tendresse troublante

Je suis fatigué de ton visage
Dans ce sable chaud, je n'ai pas de place
Je suis un fou, mais pas pour toi ...
Ressentir la peur du regret: Croisons les doigts et oublie


Prends cet enfant, pas ta misère
/Vous m'entendez ? Libère-moi/

Chosen for the narrative voice, the sense of place and the balance of narrative versus incident. Where Duras takes her largely autobiographical memoir and makes it a more traditional piece of fiction.

Ésta historia de dos amantes escrita desde el puño y letra de quién disfrutó y sufrió de ella es increíble.
Marguerite Duras es capaz de erizar la piel y provocar una profunda tristeza.

No me encantó el ritmo del relato, frases muy cortas y pausadas me cortan la intención de continuar.

Me pareció más nutrida ésta versión que la primera, así que la consideraría prescindible.

This is a book.
This is a film.
This is night.

In the wake of sudden and resounding success of The Lover, Duras second-guesses her own telling, coming at it again with an odd darting between distancing of narrative apparatuses -- is she telling a story or planning out its adaptation? -- and a confessional immediacy, disclosing much more of her family and context. But by this point, all Duras' experience and words, and even films, are part of a single body of work. There's no clear novelization or confession here, it's just her own self-distillation beyond fact of fiction. As such there's nothing unnecessary in this doubling of The Lover, even if it may not necessarily be truer or more essential (despite a few telling details withheld til this point). Probably most interesting at most aware of its impending conversion to film, and in its portrait of Duras mother and the dynamics of her by-this-point "ruined" family. But each work, even or especially those that revisit or recompose, adds another piece to Duras' life of literature.