Marguerite Duras, my beloved weirdo! I can always count on you when I’m falling behind in my French reading.
On its face, a simple chain of events: Lol V. Stein, a bit of an aloof and withdrawn odd duck, falls madly in love with Michael Richardson, who abandons her at the town ball for an older woman. Lol is heartbroken and suffers a nervous breakdown, but eventually marries Jean Bedford and moves away. They have three daughters together, and while Lol has kept a very strictly regimented life throughout their entire marriage, Jean is always worried that Lol hasn’t fully recovered from the incident. Ten years later, they return to Lol’s childhood home for Jean’s job, and Lol manufactures a meeting with her schoolgirl friend Tatiana. The two of them fell out of touch after Lol’s breakdown, largely due to the orchestrations of Lol’s mother, so they haven’t spoken in ten years. Tatiana is now married to a surgeon, and having an affair with one of his subordinates, Jacques. Lol and Tatiana have an awkward reunion, at turns warm and cruel, and things reach their peak when Lol and Jacques travel to the resort town where Lol had been jilted all those years ago. The two of them spend the night there, Jacques is in love with Lol, Lol wants him to continue seeing Tatiana, maybe he also loves Tatiana too, Lol kind of spies on them during their assignations, it’s a mess because that’s all Marguerite Duras writes and I’m here for it. And as usual the ending leaves nothing settled: Jacques is waiting for Tatiana at their usual no-tell motel, Lol is hiding in the rye field outside their window, that’s it, the end!
The fun part of this is how Duras plays with perspective. Much of the story is presented as a third-person omniscient narrator, even though the narrative never lets us forget that it’s actually a first-person account. Sometimes the narrator is involved in what’s happening in the story, sometimes they relay what other people have told them, sometimes they state flat-out that they’re imagining or hypothesizing. The “reveal,” such as it is, takes some time and gives everything a bit of extra tension.
The parallel translation I had with me was Lol V. Steins hänförelse, by the controversial Katarina Frostenson. It’s hard to think of her anymore without also thinking about the Swedish Academy scandal, Jean-Claude Arnault and corruption. Is that entirely fair? Who’s to say? But speaking of, now seems like a good moment to recommend Matilda Voss Gustavsson’s The Club. It’s still commercially unavailable in English but a sample translation seems to be floating around in the literary circles, so maybe one day it’ll be picked up.
