Helpful Score: 3
Finished reading this one this morning on the Metro rail on way to work. Well, I didn't hate it but I did find it to be somewhat meandering and confusing. The story seemed to randomly jump from first person to third person narrations and from one point in the narrator's life to another in both time and location. I guess you could consider this to be an artistic style but it didn't work real well for me. The story itself was very simple about a young French girl's affair with an older Asian man in pre-war IndoChina and the taboos against such a relationship at the time and the tragedy of lost love. I did see the movie version of this a few years ago and I thought that the movie seemed to flow a lot better than the novel.
Helpful Score: 2
This is one of the few instances where I enjoyed the movie much more than the book.
Helpful Score: 1
I was hooked on this book emotionally and taken to another place and time. Well written characters.
Helpful Score: 1
I think Duras is a remarkably talented writer, and this book was very thoughtful and rich in language.
