𝐃 𝐗 𝐌 𝐈 𝐍 𝐈 𝐐

I read two books in a day. No big deal. I used to do that often. It was a necessary skill, once. I had been a literature major, and reading quickly and absorbingly was not just encouraged but required. At that time, I could finish a novel in a few hours, annotate it, and argue about it the next morning.

One of the books I picked up today was something I was supposed to read years ago for a graduate course on the act of reading itself. I never finished the class. I dropped out because I had to work full time as a barista and pay rent. That class demanded long evenings, group projects, constant discussion, more books. I knew what it would take from me, and I couldn’t afford to give it. But I never returned the books. I kept them. They felt like promises I hadn’t entirely broken.

It turns out I like Marguerite Duras, or at least I am drawn to her. The Lover was one of those books. A novel wrapped in autobiography, or perhaps an autobiography that chose to wear the veil of fiction. The writing is lucid and distant at once. It glides between first and third person, as if the narrator cannot fully bear to inhabit the voice of the girl she once was. There is a lot of disassociation in the text. Sentences retreat. Voices blur.

The story is about a girl, a French girl living in colonial Vietnam, and an older man, wealthy, Chinese, already ruined by the world in ways she does not yet understand. It belongs to that uncomfortable line of literature and media where a man grooms a young girl with a difficult mother and an absent father. We know this pattern. It always ends with someone being told they were mature for their age. It always ends with the girl being haunted by what she thought she chose.

Duras never moralizes. The pain is presented as texture. The girl is both victim and participant, but the dynamic is never equal. It cannot be. It reminds me that regardless of race, wealth, language, or time period, a little girl is still a little girl, and someone is always waiting to exploit that.

The Lover is slim, but heavy. It lingers. I finished it in one sitting, but it clung to me afterward. Some books are like that. You don’t remember choosing them, but they find you when you’re ready to admit you have been carrying pieces of them for years.