The Lover tells the story of a French girl who, at the time, lived in Indo-China and begins an affair with a wealthy Chinese man who is 12 years older than her. The story’s main focus is on the narrator’s odd affair, while the narrator’s memories with her family members are intertwined as the narrative unfolds. This book is heavily autobiographical as the story is a personal account of the author Marguerite Duras. Essentially, the narrator can be viewed as a character in this book representing the author herself. 

One aspect of this novel I found very confusing was the timeline of the events that are being narrated. The novel begins when the narrator is of an older age, which is indicated by her depiction of her own appearance: her face that is “scored with deep, dry wrinkles”. However, the story immediately transitions to when she was 15, the time she encounters the Chinese man on the way back to boarding school. As the narrator recounts this experience of hers with the older man, she also inserts various memories of her mother, brothers, and people that left her with deep impressions. For me, the most puzzling feature was the distorted timeline. At times, the narrator would be talking about her relationship with the Chinese man  but then suddenly switch to talk about her son. Other times, she would be illustrating her memory regarding her mother’s death but would jump back to depict her boarding school experiences. This choice of chronology imitates how people may be suddenly reminded of random instances as they try to recount a past event. Although this order of events is very interesting, I do find myself feeling a bit lost at times in terms of how the plot is developing. 

This idea of who is exploiting who is something I found to be very intriguing about this story. As I was reading, I did notice how the narrator was portraying herself to be taking advantage of the Chinese man and how she was characterizing him to be in a weaker position. I noticed immediately that there was something odd about this depiction, but at the same time I couldn’t exactly describe my thoughts. The lecture video really helped me in terms of developing this idea. The narrator describes herself to be exploiting the man’s money, especially since her family is relatively poor. However, in reality, it is more likely that the man is exploiting the narrator because she is 12 years younger than him. The author does hint at the man’s abusive character by mentioning how he calls her “a whore, a slut”. However, the narrator doesn’t focus on the possible abusive and exploitative character of the man through the way he calls her, she only mentions these details as if she were trying to recall as much information from her memory as possible. 

My question for this week is what were your first impression of reading this book?