Ah… Professor, is there one book in here that will begin and end with the same healthy romantic relationship? I’m so horrified by this romantic dynamic and even though I’ve visited this book during my highschool days, it still disgusts me to read some of these pages here (like pages 37-39). There were some questions in my head as I…
Posted in Blogs, Duras | Tagged with Class difference, Colonial power, marginalization, meh, pedophilia, power dynamic, race, racism
This book by Duras marked a visit to another completely different part of the world than those that I have already visited through the books that I have chosen, as it takes place in the colony of French Indochina, a part of current day Vietnam. I truly did not expect this course’s texts to take […]
“Everything chimed with his desire and made him possess me. I had become his child. It was with his own child he made love every evening. And sometimes he takes fright, suddenly he’s worried about her health, as if he suddenly realized she was mortal and it suddenly struck him he might lose her. ” […]
mar 8, 2026 First of all why are all the books in this course highkey depressing… Before I read the book read the title The Lover and that Duras is a female French writer I thought maybe finally we have one that’s less depressing and would be an account of a woman falling in love. […]
I just finished reading ‘The Lover’ and I think I’m realizing that I don’t like French books. They are all so wishy washy and dreamy and so hard to follow. I was so confused the whole time reading this book. It felt like the narrator’s stream of consciousness but everything was fragmented and we would go from talking about her…
Thank you Marguerite Duras for this book but why did the protagonist have to be so young?? I get that she’s reflecting back on her life but a 15-year-old having an affair with a 27-year-old? Ewwwwwwww! I was just hoping for a somewhat normal relationship but I guess that’s too much to ask for. I […]
“Never again shall I..” “From now on I’ll…” “I shall…” “I’ll always have…” (pg. 34). I miss the childlike naivety of knowing everything. While this paragraph seems to be the narrator reflecting on her life, it can also be a manifestation of the young girl determined to be with a man who is majorly, inappropriately, […]
Posted in Blogs, Duras | Tagged with class, Colonialism, intersectionality, poverty, privilege, race
Marguerite Duras’s The Lover feels very different from a typical love story. What stood out to me the most while reading was how much the novel focuses on memory rather than simply telling a story about a relationship. The narrator is looking back on events that happened more than fifty years earlier, which makes everything […]
While reading The Lover by Marguerite Duras, I was immediately struck by the unusual relationship of the story. The novel describes a relationship between a fifteen year old French girl and an older Chinese man in colonial Vietnam. Because of the large age difference, the story initially reminded me of another well known novel, Lolita […]
To be honest, I think this is one of the books so far that I actually did not particularly enjoy reading. I just could not get over the fact that the age gap between the two characters was 12 years. There was a lingering discomfort and I really could not get myself to immerse myself […]
Posted in Blogs, Duras | Tagged with class, family, memory, money, relationships
