L'Amante Anglaise

by Marguerite Duras

Book Overview

Bestselling author Marguerite Duras offers a riveting novel about a savage murder in a small French town and the tragic events leading up to it.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0394750225
• ISBN13: 9780394750224
• Release Date: August 1987
• Publisher: Pantheon Books
• Length: 122 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Another Fantastic novel by Marguerite Duras

In this novel, once again, juxtaposed with the intimacy of the characters is their distance, and the incomprehensibility that exists between them. As usual language is a culprit.A murder is committed in a small French town and as the police turn the tape recorder on, the need to have the "details" of the episode "correct" reveal the murderer's identity.In the meantime, we find ourselves feasting on the reactions of the town to this event, and the townspeople's natural inclination to huddle together and while worried they will be fingered, hope for it to be a "Stranger" to NOT DESIRE TO KNOW THAT IT IS ONE OF THEM.The woman who commits the murder lives for years with a completely unsatisfying domestic setting, in a dream world in which she is cut off from the understanding of perhaps herself as well as others..Duras deftly weaves this page turner. One wants the character of the murderer revealed. The murderer was perhaps ending hypocrisy?Even as we have language, as we have an "Interpretor" of facts, as we use our own native intelligence and imagination in listening to the police interrogations and the few possible suspects stories, and as we find out what really happened. It is not so easy to summarize "La Amante Anglaise" (A french play on "English Mint" as well as "English Lover") Love lost and the yearning of someone after the dream of "essential love" here repeat, in the context of a murder.Brilliant read.

This book is a gluttonous feast of details & madness!

L'Amante Anglaise is a mystery that leaves you dizzy, it is a gluttonous feast of details and madness. At first it seems to be a murder mystery, then it turns on you and becomes a character study of a madwoman. There are vibrant, rich passages that have you begging to hop inside her head, and escape the flatness of the town. This is escapism in grand form.