Status
Available
Publication
Pantheon (1987), Edition: 1st American Edition
Description
"An astonishing meditation on the horrors of the war and on the obsessive power of personal fidelity in love." --Francine Du Plessix Gray, The New York Times Book Review Written in 1944 and first published in 1985, Duras's riveting account of life in Paris during the Nazi occupation and the first months of liberation depicts the harrowing realities of World War II-era France "with a rich conviction enhanced by [a] spare, almost arid, technique" (Julian Barnes, The Washington Post Book World ). Duras, by then married and part of a French resistance network headed by François Mitterand, tells of nursing her starving husband back to health after his return from Bergen-Belsen, interrogating a suspected collaborator, and playing a game of cat and mouse with a Gestapo officer who was attracted to her. The result is "more than one woman's diary . . . [it is] a haunting portrait of a time and a place and also a state of mind" (The New York Times).… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member JimmyChanga
"Not for a second do I see the need to be brave. Perhaps being brave is my form of cowardice."I just realized that I have not reviewed this book yet.
Part of the reason for my lapse is that there is never anything to say about war. About the Holocaust. About torture. About death.
Or rather, there is
Besides Marguerite said it all already in this book.
Which is in itself impressive. She says it all in here without falling into the typical trappings of saying it all about such a subject.
Without sentimentality. In fact with the opposite of sentimentality."There's no point in killing him. And there's no longer any point in letting him live. ... And just because there's no point in killing him, we can go ahead and do it."She goes to the very edge of emotional experience and is somehow able to write about it almost as it was going on, and it doesn't turn out like an overly emotional teenager's drivel (I just realized after I wrote this that it may be read as a subtle criticism of Anne Frank, but it's not intended that way, I haven't read her since high school, so can't speak on that front).
Part of the reason this is impressive is that to go to the very edge of emotional experience is an entirely different beast than to write out that experience on paper. To affect a reader in that way requires going to a different place inside of oneself after much silence, quite separate from the edge of experience that is experienced while in the midst of experiencing the edge of experience.
Duras was able to do that seemingly in the moment. At the edge and not at the edge at the same time. How?
Maybe the war divides us, divides our experience, so that we can talk about the missing cheese in the same sentence as we talk about the death of a traitor (as they do in one of the later chapters here).
Death and cheese, Duras understood, normally existed on different planes of human experience. But in wartime there is only one plane of human experience. Human experience becomes one dimensional. There are no hierarchies of objects. Everything is simultaneous."I feel a slight regret at having failed to die while still living."
Part of the reason for my lapse is that there is never anything to say about war. About the Holocaust. About torture. About death.
Or rather, there is
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too much to say that I never know where to begin.Besides Marguerite said it all already in this book.
Which is in itself impressive. She says it all in here without falling into the typical trappings of saying it all about such a subject.
Without sentimentality. In fact with the opposite of sentimentality."There's no point in killing him. And there's no longer any point in letting him live. ... And just because there's no point in killing him, we can go ahead and do it."She goes to the very edge of emotional experience and is somehow able to write about it almost as it was going on, and it doesn't turn out like an overly emotional teenager's drivel (I just realized after I wrote this that it may be read as a subtle criticism of Anne Frank, but it's not intended that way, I haven't read her since high school, so can't speak on that front).
Part of the reason this is impressive is that to go to the very edge of emotional experience is an entirely different beast than to write out that experience on paper. To affect a reader in that way requires going to a different place inside of oneself after much silence, quite separate from the edge of experience that is experienced while in the midst of experiencing the edge of experience.
Duras was able to do that seemingly in the moment. At the edge and not at the edge at the same time. How?
Maybe the war divides us, divides our experience, so that we can talk about the missing cheese in the same sentence as we talk about the death of a traitor (as they do in one of the later chapters here).
Death and cheese, Duras understood, normally existed on different planes of human experience. But in wartime there is only one plane of human experience. Human experience becomes one dimensional. There are no hierarchies of objects. Everything is simultaneous."I feel a slight regret at having failed to die while still living."
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LibraryThing member seoulful
A collection of short stories written by a noted author who served in the Parisian resistance network, Richelieu. The most powerful story comes from a diary she kept while waiting for her husband, an arrested resistance member, to come home from the German concentration camps. Another deals with
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the raw emotions surrounding an interrogation of an informer by the author following the liberation of Paris. Written with stark honesty revealing the horror of life under German occupation. Show Less
LibraryThing member agriffina
This book is the most sincere, down-to-earth account I have read concerning the events of the second world war. It's not aligned with any philosophical school, or even very concerned with style. It's just a story of human frailty and decency in occupied France that speaks to anyone on a basic
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level. Duras has written other memoirs including one about her role in the French resistance, but this is the least contrived and most memorable of all her books that I have seen. Show Less
LibraryThing member RickGeissal
This marvelous author wrote this book based on a journal she kept during World War II, and it is powerful.
It is not comfortable reading. This book is gritty; her perceptions when she wrote the journal, like her perceptions when she put together this book, were stark, clear & nightmarish, her
I have long liked Duras; she was a thinker as well as a writer. This is well worth the time for reading this short book.
It is not comfortable reading. This book is gritty; her perceptions when she wrote the journal, like her perceptions when she put together this book, were stark, clear & nightmarish, her
Show More
reactions raw, grim & terrible.I have long liked Duras; she was a thinker as well as a writer. This is well worth the time for reading this short book.
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Subjects
Awards
Notable Books List (1986)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1985
Physical description
7.8 inches
ISBN
039475039X / 9780394750392
Local notes
autobiography