The Lover, Duras
Hello everyone! This weeks book is The Lover by Marguerite Duras, set during the French colonial occupation of south east Asia. It is an autobiographical story of Duras' family's struggles with death and poverty, as well as her affair with "the lover" a Chinese man who is 27 years old, 12 years older than her. Overall, I don't know what to think about this book. I understand where the author is coming from and how she may have genuinely loved him in the end. However, throughout reading I could not stop thinking about how I know the nature of this relationship to be entirely wrong. I think the power dynamics in their relationship are important to understand how Duras portrays the relationship. First of all, the obvious age gap, she is 15 and he is 27, he has much larger level of maturity and understanding of consent than she could have. Second of all, he is very wealthy compared to her, and she needs his money, at the beginning even saying that the relationship ...