Learn to read them properly. They are sacred.
        -Marguerite Duras speaking of her own writing

    They say masturbation makes morons of children. It wasn't the case with me. On the contrary, it brought me reason, revolt and joy.
        -Marguerite Duras speaking of herself

These two quotations, which the critic Robert Fulford cites in his review of a biography of Ms Duras, provide us with some perspective on how we're supposed to react to this semi-autobiographical novel.  For the novel is itself masturbatory, an act of self-love.  And only someone who considers themself to be a kind of divine could possibly imagine that readers would find beautiful and moving the story of her own childhood whoredom.

Ms Duras seems to have been a profoundly despicable person, a collaborator with the Nazis in Vichy France, then switching to the Communists just in time to save her skin, disliked by even her "friends", and apparently filled with well-deserved self-loathing.  Here she tells the altogether unpleasant tale of a 15 year old French girl in Indochina who, her family having fallen on hard times, seduces a rich Chinese man twice her age in order to become his kept woman.  It is a love story that is devoid of love, a piece of erotica that is singularly unerotic, a coming of age tale by an author who seems to have spent in life trapped in the self-centeredness of childhood.  It. like its author, is simply appalling.

(Reviewed:16-Jun-02)

Grade: (F) Orrin C. Judd

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