The North China Lover: A Novel

This was a complete let down. I was looking for an AMWF love story and what I got what Chinese pido and incest. I did not realize this was going to read like a playwrite, 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.

I love Marguerite Duras and the story of the "The Lover". She gave those characters from "The Lover" more time and developed the characters richer, for lack of better words. I love how she goes into more detail about the colony and the colonial rules and such. Her style of writing is everything. I have read this book a ton of times. I would definitely recommend this book.

I recommend you watch first the movie with Jane March and Tony Leung.From what I understand, Duras wrote "The Lover," which was later made into the movie "The Lover," and then rewrote the book base more like the movie.The movie version is, in my opinion, more coherent by far, but this book version explains things in the movie that could have been misinterpreted or not at all. Naturally, the movie version differs, but I think in a better way."The Lover" is one of my all-time favorite movies; not because of the sex scenes, but because of the love scenes.This book is wonderfully full of love and tragedy, and love.

Marguerite Donnadieu, who adopted the pen name "Duras" from the name of a small village in southwestern France, was born in what was once called French Indochine, and now is more properly known as Vietnam. I first came by her work via her movie  Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) , which relates the love affair of a French woman and a Japanese man, both with the psychic scars from World War II. I even decided to visit the French town of Nevers, known for its peace and tranquility, where the French woman had had her head shaved for being a "collabo." With justification, Duras achieved considerable acclaim for her book,  The Lover , which I've read and reviewed at Amazon. Largely autobiographical, it relates her first love affair, which occurred in Indochine, in the early `30's. She is a poor French girl (no Grande Colone here), age 15, on her way from the town of Sadec, in the Mekong Delta, where her mother runs a school, back to her boarding school in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City). On the ferry crossing a branch of the Mekong, she "catches the eye" of a rich Chinese ne'er-do-well, almost twice her age, in a black limousine. This novel repeats the SAME story told in  The Lover . It was written seven years after the first, and Duras says that she did it after she learned of his death which had occurred a few years before. Could a re-hashed story work the second time around? Unlike many, I concluded it does, because it is richer and yes, deeper, the second time around.The narrator grows up in a dysfunctional family (always a good topic for a novel.) Her father died, and her mother was swindled out of her small inheritance, leaving her to struggle to put enough food on the table, and cloth the kids, on the meager salary of a governmental "fonctionnaire," the headmistress of a French school in a small town, Sadec, in Cochin Chine. In age, she is between her two brothers, Pierre and Paulo. Pierre is deeply troubled, into opium, and much else, and causes problems for the rest of the family, particularly the mother, and his other brother. With this sort of background, the narrator feels an utter lack of reticence, and is ready to look life full in the eye. So, when the young Chinese millionaire makes her an offer of a ride into Saigon, she is ready to "grab the brass ring," and rid herself of her virginity.Duras writes in a clipped, matter-of-fact style, conveying much via strong sections of dialogue. The place of their assignation is a room, one of many built by the Chinese millionaire's father, basically for that purpose, since so many Chinese "arranged marriages" seemed to result in the husband keeping a mistress. After all those years, Duras still vividly recalls how the light would come through the blinds into that room, at all hours of the day. In this twice-told tale, Duras describes in far greater detail how her mother was swindled by "colonial scum," which is depicted even more in  Un barrage contre le Pacifique  which I shall soon read. Also, she recalls her relationship with her brothers, and, of course, she covers the mother - daughter relationship. As one might suspect, the narrator's new-found extracurricular activity causes her substantial problems back at the boarding school, with the mothers of the other girls leading the charge. Her one true friend, Helene, whose family in Dalat seems to be "dumping" her, may all so be a candidate for "coming-of-age."Overall, it is a realistic view of the interwar (yes, which wars?) period, of the French colonial rule in Indochina. Duras places in her novel considerable "cues" as to how the book should be depicted cinema-graphically. To me, that is always the problem, since it invariably comes across too nostalgically, too bathed in "mellow-yellow," which, in ways, it was for Duras. For as Rod Stewart has famously sung: "The first cut is the deepest." 5-stars, plus, for this oh-so-relevant insight into what it was like to be a young French girl in one of their colonial possessions. It wasn't all "madeleines" and tea, was it?

This is an excellent book if you want to know what it was like to fall in love in another time. Duras writing enables you to feel like you are walking the same streets and riding on the ferry with her characters. Yes this was the book that was used for the permise of the movie "The Lover," but the book is so much better then the movie. It is said that this story is based in part on the authors personal experiences, which makes it even more romantic. The view you see of the past is one of great difference then what we know today. I plan to read other selections by Duras. I am glad I read the book, although the movie is good.

beautifully written book. really poetic but also quite disturbing themes. arrived before expected arrival date and the condition of the book was very good. very good price as well.

Excellent service!Book (2nd hand) arrived as expected and am very pleased with it. Would definitely purchase from awesome books again!

I read good writing, this is good writing.

The arrived fast and in good condition. After I read it a friend and then her friend enjoyed it, the book held up to the many hands it went through. I love passing on books, that it one reason why I keep buying them and refuse Kindl. I like the real thing.