Blue Eyes, Black Hair [Hardcover]

Marguerite Duras (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The spare, hypnotic dialogue between lovers that Duras has deployed with brilliance elsewhere seems to travesty itself in this disquieting novel. The style is so elliptical as to be obscure, the characters so mannered that they fail to engage our concern. A man and a woman meet at a seaside hotel, where they remain to make love. The man, who wears makeup and kohl around his eyes, is attracted to the woman because her blue eyes and black hair remaind him of a male lover whom he mourns. The woman often covers her face with a black silk scarf. Now and then she slips off to meet another man. The lovers sob frequently, as they discourse on desire and death. The woman, who identifies herself as an actress, writer and teacher, remarks that she and the man are like figments in a book. Once the book is finished, they will be "dissolved." At intervals an italicized passage in the text thrusts their situation into a darkened theater. An "actor" gives stage directions to the man and woman on reading their lines as if this was a drama and the readers were spectators. Aficionados of the French nouveau roman will respond to this slim book with more enthusiasm than the general reader. Renowned as author and screenwriter of Hiroshima mon amour, Duras received the 1986 Ritz Paris Hemingway Award for The Lover.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

He weeps/ she sleeps. This couplet sums up Duras's macabre erotic fantasy played out during late summer at a northern French beach resort. Both bisexuals have black hair, pale skin, and blue eyes, and both are infatuated with a foreigner who shares their physiognomy. For several nights the male hires the female to torment his weeping by her sleeping presence in a bare room where she covers her face with a black silk square. Every evening in present tense recapitulates the immediate past, for, as italicized stage directions intermittently remind us, this novel is really a dialogue designed for a concert reading. Bray's opaque language appropriately transcribes Duras's distance toward the two players. Marilyn Gaddis Rose, SUNY at Binghamton
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 117 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon (February 12, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394563204
• ISBN-13: 978-0394563206
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,803,999 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars For Duras Sophisticates, November 7, 2000

By 

IsolaBlue (Boston, MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blue Eyes, Black Hair (Hardcover)

Blue Eyes, Black Hair might not be recommended for a first-time reader of Duras. The book is not flowing or visual or erotic in the manner of The Lover. It seems more a continuation of Duras' literary themes rather than a novel that stands by itself. It might be of more interest to devotees of Duras' greater body of work than to the casual reader. In it, a man sees another man, briefly, through a window, and feels an attraction as strong as love. Weeping in a cafe, later the same night, he meets a young woman with black hair and blue eyes who reminds him very much of the man he saw and desired but never met. The two acknowledge to one another that they are both lonely, and the man asks the woman to go with him to his room by the sea. He wants to watch her sleep. The novel is basically a story of the transferal of desire and the lack of communion between two individuals. The book explores the idea of objectifying a love, of two people wanting things so different that their desires somehow become similar, and of feelings involved in close emotional relationships between people of different sexual orientations. It addresses the themes of loneliness, the exploration of desire and despair, of distance and fear, and of the pain in never really knowing - emotionally or physically - the desired other.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Tainted Love to the Max, October 23, 2002

By 

"siammuse" - See all my reviews

This review is from: BLUE EYES, BLACK HAIR (Pantheon Modern Writers) (Paperback)

An encounter in a cafe brings a man and woman together who are both obsessed with a blue eyed, black haired man.
Each filling a need the other has without touching, yet, "Blue Eyes,Black Hair" is so erotic in it's content that it is indecent, tainted, disturbing.
At times it was difficult to absorb and I wanted to close the book, but the writing and style was so unusual that I was intrigued and outraged at the same time.
Duras gives the reader an atmosphere of darkness,weeping, lonliness, and death.
The woman wears black silk over her face... a metaphor for shame...feelings of loss, hiding what she truly is or is not.

- He walks around the white sheets and along the walls. He asks her not to sleep, to remain naked and without the black silk. He walks around her body- ...from Blue Eyes, Black Hair...

This image reminded me of a dog circling his prey, not knowing whether to kill it, play with it, or eat it. The man does all of this.

Obsession is a sickness. Duras sets the tone. A room where the man and woman meet to weep, sleep, wrapping themselves in black silk and white sheets. Two people who are lost...obsessed with one another's obsession. Until finally...the obsession becomes one and the man and woman become the same person.

Note...This is my second book by Duras. I must admit, I've never read an author like her before. The imagery is so strong that she can use less words. I feel as if I have been inside the room myself and I don't like it!