Customer Reviews

The North China Lover: A Novel

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In 1984, Marguerite Duras won the Prix Goncourt, France's most prestigious literary award, for her short novel, "The Lover". That novel told the simple story of an adolescent French girl living in Vietnam in the 1930s. She meets an older Chinese man who becomes her lover. It is a sparely written novel, shifting in time and narrative perspective, often difficult to follow. It is also a novel charged with memory, yearning and erotic feeling.

"The North China Lover", written several years later and published in an English edition in 1992, is a kind of extension of the earlier novel, written with much more detail, inhabiting the interstices of "The Lover". Like its precursor, "The North China Lover" tells a powerful tale of love between the twenty-seven year old Chinese man and the barely teen-aged girl whom he meets on a ferry crossing the Mekong River. Once again, neither the Chinese man nor the girl has a name. However, unlike the earlier novel, many of the other characters are identified and the narrative of "The North China Lover" is considerably more detailed. Originally written as notes for a screenplay of "The Lover", the narrative of "The North China Lover" is episodic, described by one reviewer as having the "grainy, filmic qualities of a documentary." It is also more linear in its story line, easier to follow than the earlier novel, but still characterized by the nouveau roman influences that permeate Marguerite Duras' writing.

"The North China Lover", like its precursor, is a compelling work of memory, eroticism and yearning that, in true Duras style, conflates literary imagination and biography. Read it slowly, languorously savor its eroticism, and let it linger in your mind long after you've closed the book.

After first reading The Lover in my freshman year of college English course, Marguerite Duras' sporatic yet detailed writing ability left me hungry for more of her work. A caution to unprepared readers, though, the author's train of thought is somewhat confusing but a very pleasurable experience, overall. If you get to love her unique style of writing as much as I do, you will be hooked on this story of passion for life.

The North China Lover explores a deeper account, as first explained in Duras' The Lover, of the passionate affair carried on by "the child" and her "Chinese lover" in 1920s Indochina. Duras pays particular attention to addressing the mother and the two brothers of the child, forcing the reader to question whether the child allows her lover to take her sex for money or pure passion.

This autobiography of Duras' early years could be described as a real twist of fate in true Romeo and Juliet style. The Chinese lover could never marry the child because his traditional, wealthy father would never permit it, and it is in this suffering the child realizes his only real worthiness is in his captivating lovemaking. The child knows she will never marry her lover, and it is this truth which keeps Duras' character entranced with this mysterious man until her death years later in France.

If you like the book, look for Arnaud's film version of "The Lover" which starred Jane March and Tony Leung.

In 1984, Marguerite Duras won the Prix Goncourt, France's most prestigious literary award, for her short novel, "The Lover". That novel told the simple story of an adolescent French girl living in Vietnam in the 1930s. She meets an older Chinese man who becomes her lover. It is a sparely written novel, shifting in time and narrative perspective, often difficult to follow. It is also a novel charged with memory, yearning and erotic feeling.

"The North China Lover", written several years later and published in an English edition in 1992, is a kind of extension of the earlier novel, written with much more detail, inhabiting the interstices of "The Lover". Like its precursor, "The North China Lover" tells a powerful tale of love between the twenty-seven year old Chinese man and the barely teen-aged girl whom he meets on a ferry crossing the Mekong River. Once again, neither the Chinese man nor the girl has a name. However, unlike the earlier novel, many of the other characters are identified and the narrative of "The North China Lover" is considerably more detailed. Originally written as notes for a screenplay of "The Lover", the narrative of "The North China Lover" is episodic, described by one reviewer as having the "grainy, filmic qualities of a documentary." It is also more linear in its story line, easier to follow than the earlier novel, but still characterized by the nouveau roman influences that permeate Marguerite Duras' writing.

"The North China Lover", like its precursor, is a compelling work of memory, eroticism and yearning that, in true Duras style, conflates literary imagination and biography. Read it slowly, languorously savor its eroticism, and let it linger in your mind long after you've closed the book.

This is a wonderful re-work of her earlier novel, The Lover. Very sad, the story describes a youth, coming of age, that is set in a deteriorating colonial situation in Vietnam as well as a family in a crisis of addiction and mental illness. In the larger context, you really get a feeling for what it was like to live there then, as well as of the Asian and French colonial mentalities. In contrast to many contemporary French novels, which I usually find very difficult to understand given their willful obscurantism, while exotics the characters are very real and easy to identify with.

Recommended.

this is like a writers version of a directors cut of "the lover"...
if you loved the lover then you will love this :)

it fills in a lot of details that were not included in "The lover"...

answers some of the questions you might have been asking about "the lover"...

This is the first time I've read Marguerite Duras' book and I love her style of writting - superb, beautifully written and her usage of words. The translator get some credit of it - though I cannot compare since I dont know french.

If you have watch the movie, 'The lover', this book is must read. Many of the feeling, reaction .. just cannot be portrait enough in the movie.
From the starting of this book where the child met with the chinese man, it moves me deeply, in knowing their passions, their suffering and their seperation - far much than express in the movie as we will have a much broader idea.

I am not indicating that the movie is bad; it isnt at all. But, it is through this book that, the author has bring you into their capturing world, as if, you were there; you feel their pain and their love affairs.

Considerable addition to "The Lover", actually much better. Her notes which include her ideas as to how the book should be filmed are particuarily fascinating.

I read this book because I love the movie. Marguerite Duras's novel is a fascinating retelling of the domestic experiences of her adolescence that have shaped her work. This book is far more daring and truthful, it emphasizes the tough realities of her youth in Indochina and reveals much that her earlier works concealed. This book both shock and entrance me. It's initially written as notes towards a film script for the "The Lover"; the book has grainy, film tic qualities of a documentary. Gone are the romantic and nostalgic readings of the past.

Here are the humiliations and passions of the poverty-ridden world in which Duras grew up: the intense sexuality of the young woman who was her friends and classmates, a group of adolescents impatient for the experiences of adulthood while still caught up in the conflicts of childhood. From one book to another, the lover has changed by counting his bankroll in front of the destitute whites, the older brother ready to kill for his drugs, the younger brother is transformed, the "child", and herself express differently with her stubborn desire and her pain.

Neither her worldly success nor the fuss about the "The Lover" have caused this novelist to deviate an inch from her desire to tell all, about the freshness of desire, the violence of loving, which makes us understand the work. Everything is here, immediate, sensual. "The North China Lover is a brilliant book that is both stunning and diabolical. Highly recommended.

I agree with a lot of the readers of this book. I just recently have gotten reaqainted with this story after seeing it for the first time when it came out. To young to understand, it was a movie with cool love scenes. But now as a grown woman, it has envoke an interest and emotion like never before. I am not finished reading this but I have seen the movie and read "the Lover" several times in the past month. It has awakened a dragon that was lying dormant for a long time. I am sooooo glad to read this book, because it has answered so many questions that the movie did not. WHile "The Lover" is my favorite movie, I was left lingering with many questions unanswered. But in reading this book, I feel much more fulfilled. Excellent read and I cannot wait to read more of Duras' work. Look out for my screenplay in the future. While it is nothing like that story, the emotion that was envoked in me by loving this story, allowed the art inside of myself to reappear. Like an old friend lost in time...

Gosh, this really is my favorite Marguerite Duras book. I've read it twice, and the last read- about three years ago- still is fresh in my mind. Duras's depiction of Indochina and the rice delta is dreamlike as it is erotic. Read this one outside with nature by a large body of water. (Alex Sydorenko, July 1999).