Category: Marguerite Duras

Author, Bloomsbury, Book review, Fiction, France, literary fiction, Marguerite Duras, Publisher, Setting, translated fiction, women in translation

‘The Easy Life’ by Marguerite Duras (translated by Emma Ramadan and Olivia Baes)

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Fiction – paperback; Bloomsbury; 208 pages; 2023. Translated from the French by Emma Ramadan and Olivia Baes.

It took almost 80 years, but it’s wonderful that Marguerite Duras‘ second novel, The Easy Life, has finally been translated into English for the first time.

Originally published in her native France in 1944, this extraordinary novel is about a young woman dealing with the aftermath of two family tragedies in close succession.

It’s essentially a coming-of-age tale (told in the first person) and is divided into three parts.

The first charts 25-year-old Francine Veyrenatte’s life on the family farm, where her boredom is punctuated by two tragic deaths; the second follows her time in a hotel by the sea, where she goes to deal with her grief but unravels psychologically; and the third is what happens when she returns home.

Power and passion

It’s a maudlin, sometimes painful, story, and one that treads a morally ambiguous line — the first death, for instance, is essentially a murder that is covered up when the family closes rank — but it also possesses great power and passion because we feel the enormous personal transformation that Francine goes through and want to cheer her on.

As an account of resilience and stoicism in the face of adversity, it’s a compelling read, but it’s also a beautifully rendered tale highlighting what happens when people living in isolated communities turn on themselves.

Secluded farm

In Les Bugues, where the family grows tobacco crops on a secluded farm surrounded by woods, the atmosphere is claustrophobic and taciturn: Francine’s adored brother, Nicholas, has beaten up their uncle Jérôme — for reasons that have been brewing for years, but mainly involve Jérôme sleeping with Nicholas’s wife, Clémence, who is also the family’s maid.

In a cold, detached and almost cruel voice, Francine details Jérôme’s slow and painful demise (he takes 10 days to die):

In strong, regular jolts, his legs and arms stiffened; his mournful cry burst through the rooms, the garden, the courtyard, crossed the field between the path and the forest and crouched in the bushes filled with birds and sunshine. He was a beast we wanted to restrain but that managed to escape the house and, once outside, became dangerous to us. Jérôme had not yet lost hope that the outside world would rescue him, while knowing that he was alone at Les Bugues with us, who kept him completely out of sight. (p10)

After his passing, the household’s sense of normality does not resume: Clémence flees to the arms of her own family, for instance, leaving her young son behind, and a romance develops between Nicholas and Luce, a beautiful woman from his past whom everyone adores. Francine also acts upon her attraction to Tiène, who runs the farm, and there’s an expectation, from her mother, that the pair will marry.

But then another tragedy strikes (I’ll refrain from explaining it because it spoils the plot), and this is when Francine, desperate to do something exciting for herself while she has the opportunity, catches the train to T., a town on the Atlantic coast, where she will spend the last days of summer alone in a boardinghouse.

Respite by the sea

But with too much time on her hands and unmoored from her usual routines, Francine becomes deeply introspective and dissociates from herself — notice the shift in pronouns in the following paragraph:

Here, in my room, it’s me. It’s as if she no longer knows it’s her. She sees herself in the mirrored armoire; she’s a tall girl with blond hair, yellowed by the sun, a tan face. In the bedroom, she takes up too much space. From the very small open suitcase, she pulls out three blouses to look natural before the girl watching her. Though she avoids seeing herself, she sees what she’s doing in the mirrored armoire. (p94)

Towards the end of her holiday, an incident on the beach shakes her out of her self-imposed stupor and passivity, forcing her to consider who she is and what she wants out of life.

And so, after 15 days away, in which she’s fallen apart and then put herself back together, she heads home determined to pursue an easy life (hence the book’s title), which is the one mapped out for her, rather than one that might be less predictable and more challenging.

Disquieting and distinctive

There’s a lot to like in this deeply disquieting novel written in Duras’ distinctive style, which is introspective, dark and fierce.

Her prose is eloquent and perceptive (especially when referring to matters of the heart and sexual attraction), but it can also cut to the quick. She expertly conveys mood and suspense by the rhythm and repetition of her words and by keeping her sentences short. It’s almost as if she is writing music to be performed staccato.

This edition, which includes a foreword by American novelist, essayist, critic and professor Kate Zamreno, has a terrific translators’ note, which explains some of the challenges associated with translating the prose into English. I’ll let them have the last word:

We channeled Francine’s boredom, her chaos, her youth and inherent old age. We let ourselves feel her fatigue, her containment, and her fragmentation, in turns. That’s how you translate Duras: you become one of her dreamers and degenerates. (p187)

Author, Bernard MacLaverty, Birgit Vanderbeke, Book lists, Cynan Jones, Damon Galgut, J.L. Carr, Jay Mcinerney, Karin Fossum, Kate Jennings, Magnus Mills, Marguerite Duras, Mary Costello, Nell Leyshon, Nuala Ní Chonchúir, Sonya Hartnett, Tarjei Vesaas, Tommy Wieringa, Yoko Ogawa

17 intriguing novellas you can read in a day (or an afternoon)

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If you are looking for a quick read during “lockdown”, something that will absorb you and take you out of yourself for a few hours, you can’t go past a short novel.

I have a penchant for books with fewer than 200 pages and thought I’d list some of my favourites here.

All these books can easily be read in the space of a day — or an afternoon. They have been arranged in alphabetical order by author’s surname. To see a full review, simply click the book title.

Cover image of A Month in the Country by JL Carr

A Month in the Country by JL Carr (1980)
Escape to a long-lost English summer in this subtle tale of a young soldier who returns from the Great War and undertakes a special project: to uncover a medieval mural inside a church.

Academy Street by Mary Costello (2014)
Follow all the joy and heartaches in the life of a passive, too-afraid-to-grab-life-by-the-horns Irishwoman from her girlhood in rural Ireland to her retirement in New York more than half a century later.

The Lover by Marguerite Duras (1984)
Immerse yourself in this evocative and sensual story set in 1930s Indo-China which revolves around a teenage girl’s affair with a man 12 years her senior.

Bad Intentions by Karin Fossum (2011)
Discover a crime book with a difference in this fast-paced story about three men who go on a weekend trip to an isolated cabin by a lake — but only two of them return.

Small Circle of Beings

Small Circle of Beings by Damon Galgut (2005)
Learn about a stubborn South African mother who fails to take her young son to hospital when he falls dangerously ill — will you condemn her or feel empathy?

Of a Boy by Sonya Hartnett (2009)
Spend time in the head of a scared, lonely schoolboy who convinces himself that the three children who move in across the road are the same children whose recent disappearance now fills the TV news.

Snake by Kate Jennings

Snake by Kate Jennings (2001)
Meet Rex and Irene, a married couple living on an outback farm in post-war Australia, who hate each other but must muddle on regardless.

The Long Dry by Cynan Jones (2014) 
Accompany Gareth as he spends an entire day trudging the hills of his Welsh farm looking for a missing cow —  and along the way learn about his hopes, his dreams and the love he has for his wife and children.

Cal by Bernard MacLaverty (1983)
Get caught up in an affair between a Catholic man and an older Protestant woman during the height of The Troubles in Northern Ireland — and be prepared for a heart-rending morally challenging ride.

Explorers of the new century by

Explorers of the New Century by Magnus Mills (2006)
Strap yourself in for a totally bonkers competition between two groups of explorers competing to reach the “furtherest point from civilisation” — expect many laughs and quite a lot of WTF moments!

The Colour of Milk by Nell Leyshon (2012)
Take 15-year-old sharp-tongued Mary by the hand in “this year of lord eighteen hundred and thirty” and go with her as she is forced to work at the local vicarage as the live-in help.

Bright Lights Big City by Jay McInerney (1985)
Experience life as an out-of-work fact-checker in 1980s New York — go to all the parties, take all the drugs, but don’t let on your glamourous wife has left you, and do your best not to fall apart at the seams.

You by Nuala Ní Chonchúir (2010)
Meet a funny, feisty 10-year-old narrator caught between two families —  her mother and her new boyfriend; and her father and his new wife — in 1980s Dublin.

The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa (2010)
Be charmed by the relationship between a young housekeeper and her client, an elderly mathematics professor whose short-term memory only lasts 80 minutes.

The Ice Palace by Tarjei Vesaas (1966)
Succumb to the mystery of an intense friendship between two 11-year-old girls, one of whom disappears in the “ice palace”, a frozen waterfall, in rural Norway.

The Mussel Feast by Birgit Vanderbeke (1990)
Sit around the dinner table with a German family awaiting the arrival of the patriarch so that they can all celebrate his promotion with mussels and wine — but why is he so late?

The Death of Murat Idrissi by Tommy Wieringa (2019)
Travel abroad with two young women from the Netherlands, on holiday in Morocco, who agree to help smuggle a young man across the border into Europe — with deadly repercussions.

Have you read any of these? Do you have a favourite novella? Or can you recommend a few that I haven’t put on my list?

Author, Book review, Calder, Fiction, France, literary fiction, Marguerite Duras, Publisher, Setting

‘Moderato Cantabile’ by Marguerite Duras

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Moderato Cantabile by Marguerite Duras

Fiction – paperback; Calder; 122 pages; 2017. Translated from the French by Richard Seaver.

I’ve been keen to read more books by Marguerite Duras having loved The Lover a few years ago. Much of her work appears to be out of print, or at least difficult to track down, so when I saw Moderato Cantabile on the shelves at Waterstone’s a month or so ago I just had to buy it.

First published in 1958, it was republished by Surrey-based Calder (an imprint of Alma Books) last year.

It’s a rather strange and beguiling novella (easily read in an hour), but one that is hard to pin down. I’m not sure I fully understood everything it was about.

I’m guessing that the title — a direction for playing music in a “moderate and melodious” way — is a metaphor for the book’s structure, which is based around eight short chapters. The final two are rather climatic compared with the six earlier chapters, which are so moderate as to be slow and, dare I say it, a tad repetitive. In other words, it reads a bit like a musical score: beginning slowly, repeating notes and choruses, then building to a crescendo.

A simple story

The story is a very simple one. Anne Desbaresdes, a well-to-do woman, takes her young son to piano lessons every Friday. On one particular Friday, shortly after the piano lesson is finished, she hears a scream from the café below the piano teacher’s apartment. A crowd has gathered and a man is sitting on the floor of the café, a woman next to him, whom he has murdered.

When Anne discovers that the murder was a crime of passion, she becomes slightly obsessed with it. She visits the café the next day in the hope to find out more. She orders a glass of wine and strikes up a conversation with a fellow drinker, an unemployed man called Chauvin, who claims he witnessed the murder.

Every day, for the next week, Anne visits the café and converses with Chauvin in a bid to imagine what might have made the man kill his lover. She brings her son with her, but he is free to roam the streets and the harbour of the coastal town, leaving her free to enjoy adult company.

But Anne, who is not normally a drinker, finds herself becoming increasingly enamoured by wine (“How wonderful wine is,” she states, seven days in). She also becomes enamoured with Chauvin, who seems to know a lot of detail about her life, including where she lives and what the interior of her house looks like. She’s constantly nervous — her hands shake whenever she’s in the café — but nothing untoward ever happens between them. Their hands rest side by side on the table, but they never touch.

Forbidden relationship

It’s clear, though, that their “relationship” is a forbidden one, for Chauvin is working class and Anne is not. Her husband, it turns out, owns the factory where most of the men who drink in the café are employed. The café’s landlady clearly doesn’t approve of their liaison, watching them carefully from behind the bar. More often than not they sit in the darkened back room away from prying eyes.

Anne is always careful to leave in the early evening, not long after the factory whistle has blown, presumably so that she can get home before her husband. Yet by chapter six — more than seven days after the murder — the normal pattern of her day-to-day life has been influenced by alcohol, and after drinking one too many wines, finds herself getting home late for a dinner party she is supposed to be hosting. Her husband is disgraced by her drunken behaviour and she’s left to sleep on the floor of her son’s room, presumably having been thrown out of the marital bed.

By the novella’s end we see how the murder has turned Anne’s life upside down, unravelling the tight formality of her existence, and leaving her to pursue a relationship that is seemingly just as shallow as the one from which she is trying to escape.

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‘The Lover’ by Marguerite Duras

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The_lover

Fiction – Kindle edition; Harper Perennial; 130 pages; 2006. Translated from the French by Barbara Bray.

One day, I was already old, in the entrance of a public place a man came up to me. He introduced himself and said: “I’ve known you for years. Everyone says you were beautiful when you were young, but I want to tell you I think you’re more beautiful now than then. Rather than your face as a young woman, I prefer your face as it is now. Ravaged.”

So begins Marguerite Duras’ The Lover, an evocative and sensual novel about a young girl’s affair with a man 12 years her senior, which was first published in 1984.

I read it back to back with another (supposedly) sensual novel, the (rather horrid) Hausfrau by Jill Alexander Essbaum, and they couldn’t be further apart — in mood, style or sheer literary power — even though they covered similar (sexual) territory.

The Lover is narrated by Hélène Lagonelle, a French woman looking back on her life in Indochina (now Vietnam) and, in particular, the romance she had with a wealthy Chinese man in 1929 when she was just 15.

It’s largely based on the author’s own life — she was born in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) to French parents who had emigrated there to work in the French colony. But things did not go well: her father quickly returned to France, where he died soon after, and her mother, a schoolteacher, made a bad property investment in the colony, which mired them in poverty. Duras also claimed to have been beaten by her mother and her older brother.

In the novel, the narrator, who effortlessly flicks between the first and third person, has a strained relationship with her mother, who wants her daughter to do well at school, get an education and study mathematics. The daughter does not think she is good at mathematics, but she excels at French and wants to be a writer.

But that’s not the only strain in their relationship. The mother often goes through periods of despair — I suspect an undiagnosed clinical depression — and locks herself away, despondent and unable to properly care for her family. This hardens Hélène, who blames this lack of care for the death of her younger brother, who succumbs to pneumonia, and it also makes her ashamed.

Search for identity

From the outset, it’s clear that Hélène is unsure of her own identity. She often dresses provocatively — a threadbare silk dress that is sleeveless and low-cut, with a leather belt, gold lame high heels and a man’s Fedora hat — because she feels confident in these kinds of clothes. Yet she realises this attire makes the “girl look so strangely, so weirdly dressed” and “might make people laugh”.

But it is exactly this outfit that catches the eye of the Chinese financier, who later becomes her lover. Hélène is returning to boarding school in Saigon from a holiday and is crossing the Mekong Delta by ferry. They talk on the boat and then he gives her a lift in his chauffeured limousine. Later that week he picks her up from school to show her where he lives, and from there a sexual relationship ensues. The rumour mill goes into overdrive:

Fifteen and a half. The news spreads fast in Sadec. The clothes she wears are enough to show. The mother has no idea, and none about how to bring up a daughter. Poor child. Don’t tell me that hat’s innocent, or the lipstick, it all means something, it’s not innocent, it means something, it’s to attract attention, money. The brothers are layabouts. They say it’s a Chinese, the son of the millionaire, the villa in Mekong with the blue tiles. And even he, instead of thinking himself honoured, doesn’t want her for his son. A family of white layabouts.

Surprisingly, the affair does not worry the mother, who sees it as a means to an end: her daughter’s lover is wealthy, so he may be able to help the impoverished family with money. If that is a form of prostitution, she can live with it.

Hélène now becomes aware of her own power. She knows that her mother needs her to help support the family. And she knows that men look at her and desire her.

For the past three years white men, too, have been looking at me in the streets, and my mother’s men friends have been kindly asking me to have tea with them while their wives are out playing tennis at the Sporting Club.

Beautiful melancholia

There are a lot of complicated family dynamics in this novel, but it is the wise and knowing voice of the narrator, the self-confident schoolgirl who wants to forge her own path in life, take risks and escape parental and societal expectations, that makes it such a powerful read.

The narrative, which often winds back on itself through Duras’s use of flashbacks, is compelling in the way it explores sexual taboos and the tensions between the French colonists and the South Vietnamese, while the writing has a beautiful melancholic tinge and pulsates with an aching loneliness  — “I grew old at eighteen” —  which is hugely reminiscent of Jean Rhys. It’s moody and evocative without being depressing, the kind of book that you can settle down with on a rainy afternoon and be swept away into another time and place.

I really loved and admired this short novel. It was awarded the French Goncourt Prize in 1984 and adapted for film in 1992.

‘The Lover’ by Marguerite Duras, first published in 1984, is listed in Peter Boxall’s 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, where it describes the novel as “very cinematic”, claiming that the author was influenced by “the French nouveau roman of the 1950s”.