Hello, everyone! This week, I read Marguerite Duras’s novel “The Lover”. I was kind of scared to read this book after Jon explained it to us in the last class. I was ready to face some discomforting moments, but I may have exaggerated a bit. It i…
Posted in Blogs | Tagged with desire, expectations, Forbidden, identity, love, Power Dynamics
Marguerite Duras’ novel, “The Lover,” unfolds against the backdrop of pre-war colonial Southeast Asia, a landscape that mirrors the author’s own upbringing in French Indochina, now Vietnam. Duras draws heavily from her experiences in crafting a narrative that blurs the lines between autobiography and fiction. She challenges societal assumptions and norms, delving into the complexities […]
Posted in Blogs, Duras | Tagged with agency, desire, identity, love, power
Hey Everyone! This week’s book is “The Lover” by Marguerite Duras. This book was an interesting read because it was very strange yet it kept me wanting to read more. It felt like one of those forbidden reads where I wanted to see if the nameless 2…
Posted in Blogs | Tagged with abuse, children, death, desire, first love, life, sex, The Lover
Hey Everyone! This week’s book is “The Lover” by Marguerite Duras. This book was an interesting read because it was very strange yet it kept me wanting to read more. It felt like one of those forbidden reads where I wanted to see if the nameless 2…
Posted in Blogs | Tagged with abuse, children, death, desire, first love, life, sex, The Lover
To say the least, this book made me very uncomfortable. Have any of you ever read/watched Lolita? These two books give off very similar vibes in the sense that they both make me want to crawl out of my skin. I will say I did enjoy the structure of the book, how we were revisiting […]
After reading this novel, I’m now thinking about the subject of names. When the girl (who, as far as I can tell, was never named) talks about her lover and her family, they are not named (unless I missed the mentions of their names) – except when she names her younger brother, “our little Paulo” […]
Posted in Blogs | Tagged with age, desire, family, Marguerite Duras, memory, names, The Lover, war
I quite enjoyed the format of The Lover as it was quite different from the other novels we have read so far. I liked the autobiographical approach and how the story of young Duras was told from the perspective of an older Duras. The main theme I fund alluring in this novel was the topic […]
Posted in Blogs | Tagged with desire, lovers, passion, woman, youth
“Everything flows towards the Pacific, no time for anything to sink, all is swept along by the deep and head-long storm of the inner current, suspended on the surface of the river’s strength” (Duras 22) To fully understand what is happening in this novel, one must observe the disturbing content embedded. The Lover is a […]
Posted in Blogs, Duras | Tagged with authenticity, coming of age, desire, Forbidden, identity, love, memory, taboo, war
Hey everyone! I just finished reading “The Hour of the Star” by Clarice Lispector which was a great read that explored many different themes we have discussed previously in class. The story revolves around Macabea, a young woman from northeastern Brazil, whose life is explained through the eyes of the narrator, Rodrigo S.M. This format […]
Posted in Blogs, Lispector | Tagged with class, desire, Dreams, framing, gender, history, life, narration, sexism
This book is utter confusion. At the first half of the book, I was super confused about what I was even reading. I could barely make out the situations that were being described in the book in my head and just couldn’t grasp what the book was even talk…
Posted in Blogs | Tagged with abuse, death, desire, exploitation, freedom, life, neglect, poverty
