Review: Ljubimec (The Lover) by Marguerite Duras

Title: Ljubimec
Author: Marguerite Duras

Read copy: Hardcover
Published: 2004
Publisher: Delo
ISBN: 961633221X
ISBN-13: 9789616332217

An international best-seller with more than one million copies in print and a winner of France's Prix Goncourt, The Lover has been acclaimed by critics all over the world since its first publication in 1984.

Set in the prewar Indochina of Marguerite Duras's childhood, this is the haunting tale of a tumultuous affair between an adolescent French girl and her Chinese lover. In spare yet luminous prose, Duras evokes life on the margins of Saigon in the waning days of France's colonial empire, and its representation in the passionate relationship between two unforgettable outcasts.

My rating:

I didn't like it in 2004 when I read it for the first time and this re-read didn't improve my opinion.

Boring, jumpy, twitchy, the story, pacing, timing...everything was all over the place. The reason why they included it in the 50 best books of the century is beyond me.

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1 star, fiction, Marguerite Duras, re-read

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