![]() ![]() The book is written in fragments, searing images of her childhood, her affair at fifteen with a Chinese businessman, and the devastating violence of her family life. It does not run smoothly but emerges, moment by moment, crystalline and glittering. It is in flux, as it is in life in all of us, as we remember. Reading Duras’ memories of the boat to Saigon, her fifteen-and-a-half year-old self standing on the deck, about to meet the man who would utterly alter the fabric of her life and experience, memory is not something to be merely recounted as this happened, then this, and then this. The memory is held up in the very moment of its reclamation and loss, all at once. Even the future is already present and decided. On the very first page of her most famous and autobiographical novel, The Lover, Marguerite Duras seems to capture in one line the most powerful aspect of the book: “Very early in my life, it was too late.” In this line, recollection, loss, the time that causes it, and the past and present, all exist simultaneously. ![]()
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