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This book is so sweet and so sad. The Lover is about a young whitegirl in Indochina (now Vietnam) in the 1930’s. She’s there with her poor family going to a boarding school for French girls. She meets a guy, though–an older rich Chinese guy who is infatuated with her (also an outsider). The girl is basically treated like a prostitute in her area as she begins getting picked up and dropped off by him in his limo all the time. Doesn’t help that she wears a man’s hat, a silk dress, and gold lamé shoes around town.
The writing is very matter of fact. Emotional and steady. Like how the guy carries her from the tub to the bed or how she agrees with his dad that they can’t get married. Everything is done with passion. A crush on her friend at school (“I am worn out with desire” 74), the grief of her brother’s sudden death (“I don’t know why I loved him so much as to want to die of his death” 106). Just a great book about family and money and leaving and staying. Marguerite Duras is real as hell. Loved it.
Best line: “We go back to the apartment. We are lovers. We can’t stop loving each other” (Duras 63).
-Rachel
