Four Novels: The Square / Moderato Cantabile / 10:30 on a Summer Night / The Afternoon of Mr. Andesmas

Rating:
Summary: A Good Introduction to Duras
Review: "10:30 on a Summer Night" is by far the best of the four novels in this book, focusing on murder and infidelity during a vacation outside Madrid. "Moderato Cantible" is good but not as intriguing as "10:30 on a Summer Night" and is about an alcoholic mother developing an odd relationship with a stranger in a café on the way home from her son's piano lesson. "The Square" has some good lines but is generally slow, focusing solely on a salesman and a servant talking in the park.

Rating:
Summary: beautiful
Review: The first story ("The Square")is a bit tedious (or maybe the significance was over my head). It's composed almost entirely of dialogue between two strangers who meet in a park and discuss their rather pitiful lives. But the three final stories are truly beautiful. The language is so vivid that even reading the stories on a cold Minnesota night I felt the urge to mop sweat from my brow. The third story, "10:30 on a Summer Night," in which a woman watches the sexual attraction develop between her husband and best friend, is incredibly poignant.

Rating:
Summary: I don't get it
Review: Two of my closest, most intellectual/cultural-elite type friends have raved about Marguerite Duras. So I read "The Lover." Great story. Okay...they tell me "Moderato Cantabile" is her masterpiece. I search for an English translation, find this foursome. Terrific, I think, I can explore even more. I must ask the reviewers of this work...Have you read it all together???? Every story is the same, folks! This woman had one, maybe two stories (okay, Hiroshima Mon Amour makes three) in her blood. Take an alcoholic woman with a hidden sexual agenda, throw in an unfaithful (substitute uptight/unattentive, etc) husband...or father (oh yeah, don't forget the incest angle), then place them all in some tedious, drawn-out situation (aftermath of a murder investigation, waiting for a construction contracter, a storm, an afternoon on a park bench), then let them TALK. And talk. And talk. Get it? I may not be the super intellectual, cultural elite type, but I know pretension when I read it. Skip Duras. Or...better...read "The Lover," pretend you know all about her, and watch the others at a party try to impress you.