A brilliant bit of writing from the twenty-six year old Duras, semi-autobiographical and full of heart.

This is the story of the Taneran family, a French family from the upper class who have fallen on hard times. In addition to their residence in the city, they own a vineyard in the French countryside. The matriarch of the family struggles to maintain the family's standard of living and to keep her children moving forward. She greatly favors the son, Jacque, who by most objective standards is a horrid person only interested in himself and his comforts. Her daughter, Maud is often ignored or put in a secondary situation.
As the novel opens, the family has come down to the country. The mother is attempting to sell the vineyard to a local family and is willing to sacrifice Maud to be their son's wife in order to seal the deal. Maud, on the other hand, is uninterested in the suitor picked for her and is fascinated by a man named George who is a friend of her brother.

This was Duras' debut novel but has only now been translated and available in English. It foreshadows many of the themes that are familiar to readers of Duras' later works such as The Lover. It portrays family dynamics and the second class status of women. Women's sexuality is explored but also seen as a source of shame in the social environment unless all rules are followed.

I listened to this novel. The narrator had a calm voice that accurately portrayed the slow moving action of being in the country and falling into relationships. After the book was over, there was about an hour of supplementary material, discussing Duras' work in general and the path that this book took to get to market. It took several years and reworking before it was published. Readers will be intrigued by the intricate familial relationships and the dawning of women demanding to be valued as much as men. This book is recommended for readers of literary fiction.

I’m judging the L.A. Times 2020 and 2021 fiction contest. It’d be generous to call what I’m doing upon my first cursory glance—reading. I also don’t take this task lightly. As a fellow writer and lover of words and books, I took this position—in hopes of being a good literary citizen. My heart aches for all the writers who have a debut at this time. What I can share now is the thing that held my attention and got this book from the perspective pile into the read further pile.

Unfortunately, since Duras was not alive at the time of publication this novel is not eligible for the prize. But BUT I found the prose so striking I couldn’t resist but read it—even amongst being a graduate doctoral candidate in Creative Writing and reading 200 other novels and story collections for this prize.

Here’s an early sentence that nabbed me, “Thus it was that they gathered around the Henry II—style buffet on the evenings they arrived home from their trips. And those evenings were always the most trying because they realized that they hadn’t yet left each other and that their old sideboard continued to observe them like the image of their despair.”-4

When the story begins, it already feels finished. When the story completes, it feels unfinished. The novel has an oeuvre to it that's hard to explain. When paused mid-way, it still felt both complete and not yet begun. The characters meander about their lives, their way of life is that of privilege from the outside. But when you see the family up close, the lack of things are glaring. At the very beginning it goes "no one had ever been happy in her family." it is both summary of the novel and a spoiler in itself.

I am in two minds with this. On one hand, its a brilliant deconstruction of the family - of mother who is fond of her son - the man who does nothing but expects everything, of the daughter who sits and watches, observes and participates. Is it a complex story? or is the author being careless with her lines? The vagueness at times is very telling, the slow disappearances of father figures, certain dialogues seemingly expose things that I was hoping to know more about but the author never discloses. Its both exciting and frustrating to be tagged along where narration moves along obliquely (probably purposeful) and sometimes its so simple that its jarring.

reading this, for sure, is an experience and thanks to Netgalley & The New Press, I am glad to have the opportunity to do so.

It's difficult to rate the work of a great author like Marguerite Duras, and it is even more difficult not to compare it to her excellent novels, like The Lover.

The story is pretty slow-paced but beautifully written. The prose contains captivating descriptions of surroundings and nature. In The Impudent Ones, Duras depicts family relationships and conflicts in a bourgeois family, and inside this novel, there are romances, gossip, and scandals. It is partly autobiographical, partly a work of fiction. This novel is a real treat for literary fiction fans, and I would recommend it to that type of reader.

Thanks to the publisher for the opportunity to read this! All opinions are my own.

After so many years of waiting for an English translation in print, was delighted to include this early novel in the March edition of Novel Encounters, my monthly column on the top fiction ahead for Zed Books, Zoomer magazine’s writers and reading vertical (full review at at link).

This was Marguerite Duras’ first novel, published in 1943, republished in 1992 and now for the first time in an English translation, 2021. Many commentators have said how it’s really not very good, and is only a pale shadow of the books Duras went on to write during her long writing career, and even she herself, later in life, didn’t think it was very good. Certainly it has its faults, the main one being a certain incoherency in the plot at times. That said I don’t think it’s as bad as many reviewers have claimed. Although rather lacklustre in tone, I found it a reasonably compelling narrative with some interesting characters who are explored with insight and acute observation. It’s the story of the Taneran family – ineffectual father, domineering mother, wastrel older son, confused and needy daughter and bland younger son – who live in a strange sort of co-dependency, not liking each other but seemingly unable to do without each other. The mother is fixated on Jacques, the eldest, who can do no wrong in her eyes, but whose dissolute character has brought the family to the edge of ruin. The family retreat from Paris to their land in the south-west of France to try to recoup some money, but matters go awry there too. All the characters are passive and seem to let events overtake them and their inability to connect with each other is especially hard on daughter Maud, who is so desperate for love. It’s a semi-autobiographical tale, which adds authenticity and poignancy. Both setting and subject matter reflect Duras’ own life, and the themes that come to dominate her later writing are clearly in evidence here: dysfunctional families, alienation, disconnection, affairs, betrayal, illicit love and a mother’s obsessive love for an unworthy son. The descriptive passages are finely written, and the hopeless and despairing atmosphere expertly maintained throughout. I really quite enjoyed it and don’t feel it deserves so much criticism. A very useful and informative afterword aids the reader’s understanding and appreciation.

Duras’s 1943 debut, in translation for the first time, is not perfect by any means.... but I definitely saw many moments of her later brilliance (‘The Lover’ being one of my all time favorites).....
It’s all here.... the writing is lovely, the family is toxic, the love affair illicit, and the setting captured beautifully. So glad I had a chance to read the early work of this fabulous writer...
Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity.

Marguerite Duras is perhaps best known for her novel The Lover, which I have on my to-read list but haven't yet read. (someday!) When I was offered the chance to review The Impudent Ones, which has been newly translated into English, I figured this could be my intro to Duras.

Set in France in the first half of the 20th century, the novel explores social standings and expectations, reputation and consequences. At the center of the story is a family with two young adults, Maud and her brother. Maud is coming of age and eager for love. There is a lot of talk about marriage and a proper match. Maud makes some choices that wind up with her being in a less than ideal situation.

I wanted to connect more with this novel but it was missing a bit of an oomph factor for me that perhaps Duras acquired in her later works. I definitely still plan on reading Duras' previously translated works because I did enjoy her writing style. I can see why Elena Ferrante is compared to her.

This is Marguerite Duras's first novel, and despite its lack of maturity compared with her later work, it is undeniably Duras. The Impudent Ones is the story of a family the Grant-Taneran. Maud a rather shy young woman experiences her first love amid a most peculiar and dysfunctional family who just lost one of its members.
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Duras here explores family dynamics with the same kind of cynicism and unfailing prose that she is known for. This is a brilliant read that foreshadows what is to come and gives you a glimpse of Duras's mastery.

This was not an easy book to get into at first, especially if you're out of practice when reading literary fiction (dare I say classics). It took me a while, but once you get into it, Duras pulls you into a world of characters that are almost too real at times.
Not an easy book to read, but a book that is well worth the effort just like her other books. This being her first work makes it a little less accomplished and polished, but still, it is interesting to see how her writing progresses over time.

Please put the translator’s name in the book description. That person is the reason there is a new book to promote and should be recognised.

I had never heard of Marguerite Duras before (should I have?) she wrote a lot of books but this was her first and until now hasn’t been translated into English, unlike many of the others.

I requested this as I’m always glad to see books translated (I’m a translator) and made accessible to more readers. It’s one of the reasons that people who don’t speak French (me) haven’t heard of her; translated (into English) books rarely get as much fanfare as English language books and although more accessible don’t often become widespread.

Anyway, all that aside, this book was Dull (capitalisation intended).

To borrow a line from the book description The Impudent Ones ‘introduces Duras’s classic themes of familial conflict, illicit romance, and scandal in the sleepy suburbs and southwest provinces of postwar France.’ And that is it. Romance and scandal in the country (you can guess what the scandal is). Judging by the interminable extra content at the end (translator’s note and essay on the novel by Jean Vallier) there wasn’t much need to translate this book as it sounds like all her books have the same story and are semi-autobiographical.

Good translation? This is never an easy question. To really judge you need to compare it to the original and have an idea of what the translator intended. However, I wasn’t keen on the style and word choices in some parts – personally I prefer a more readable, natural sounding text. ‘He was masticating his food… it made a bizarre, irritating noise.’ Why not chewing? And why does chewing sound bizarre and not just strange or odd? Other instances were more successful: ‘the subtle, slightly salted savor of the shower.’ It is always incredibly satisfying to be able to achieve alliteration like that in a translation.

I’m disappointed to rate this book so low but I really didn’t enjoy the writing or the story and I couldn’t wait for it to end.

Thank you Netgalley and The New Press for the ARC.

I know this is a previously untranslated text, and therefore very significant to the literary world, and while I don’t take that away from this book, I can’t say that I enjoyed the reading experience. I think it had all the elements to be a really compelling read, something just didn’t click for me and I think it was the tone and the pace. Maid was also completely in relatable (for reasons other than that she’s French nobility) and I found the toxic family dynamic pretty insufferable, frankly. I was hoping the love triangle would really engage me, but even that was hard to get excited about. Historically speaking, it’s worth the afternoon spent to read, but if you’re looking for entertainment, I’d pass.

"No one had ever been happy in her family."

A decaying, irreparable portrait of a bourgeois family, Duras' debut novel, The Impudent Ones, struggles with its initially wavering focus on its characters.

A daughter-in-law's death perturbs the Grant-Taneran family. The event prompts them to move to their residence in Uderan in the hopes that it will do Mrs Grant's bereaved but vile son, Jacques, some good. But the supposed bereaved Jacques seems to have other things in mind. He is determined to retain the Grant-Taneran's family status amidst their dwindling finances. He eagerly takes on the patriarchal role while their father, who stays on in their house in Paris, remains absent throughout the novel. From bullying his younger sister, neglected Maud, influencing their sycophant, younger brother, Henry, to manipulating their mother for money, it unfolds a remarkable, at times irritating, family drama under the gaze of the Uderan townspeople. With their mother always favouring and excusing Jacques' actions, he only becomes more confident in executing his wicked ways.

Meanwhile, the depressed and discouraged Maud looks on helplessly with their circumstances. By planning to marry her off to a man she doesn't love, her brother and mother use her family position to try saving the Grant-Taneran's place in the social class ladder. In her desperation, Maud readily clings to the first man who catches her eye. Perhaps, for a time, even her heart. She runs away and slips out several nights, mistaking the guise of escape as love and fastening herself with the deceitful promise of this escape—scandals be damned! Indeed, a part of the novel encourages her to take on vengeance against her brother. But even this turns out to be futile. Her confining circumstances is glaringly conspicuous after this attempt.

The Impudent Ones' tragically delineates women's lack of choices in an era where they expect to please men in their life at the expense of their individuality. In her unquenchable thirst for love and attention, she gives herself to someone she can't even have any meaningful conversations with; a call out to her parents' loveless relationship; an implication of her and her mother's own internalised sexism. Her days stretch into lasting unhappiness. The familial prison she escapes from puts her in a different prison.

Duras' prose meanders, with a pinch of elusiveness, here and there. A dull quality submerges some of its sentiments. Yet, whenever it clicks, it lucidly reveals the despairing dispositions of human nature. More so, the lengths people will do to keep their reputation polished despite its rusting corners. To think of it as a debut novel and a partly autobiographical sketch forgive its shortcomings. It highlights the distinct qualities that made Duras one of the most celebrated writers in the world. Do colour me gratified with The Impudent Ones; it also elbowed me to seek Duras' other writings. The Lover shall be next on the list.

Thank you, The New Press and Netgalley, for the advance copy.

I am honored to be able to read the first English translation of the debut novel of an acclaimed female author from an era where it was particularly hard for women to gain reputations as writers (at least, given the number of women featured in the chaotic age of the literary Western Canon).

The Impudent Ones centers on the daughter's journey to flee a poor and troubled family. As the translator notes, the story is somewhat based on Marguerite's upbringing, and includes themes and events that recur in later novels with more nuance and fluidity that one never expects from a debut novel. From my reading, the novel needs a biographical interpretation to be understood because she omitted essential details. The father is an absent father figure, which is important to the dangerous family dynamic between her brother and mother, but weirdly, the father just disappears from the novel? From the beginning of part 2, the father just doesn't seem to exist and I don't seem to recall why he stopped being in the story, but from a biographical understanding, we know that Marguerite's father died at about this time in her youth if we presume Marguerite is the daughter of the brothers. This, and more, is revealed from the Translator's notes which account for 16% of this edition on Kindle are really interesting and essential to anyone interested in the ideas and themes of Marguerite Duras. It's amazing we only have this in English in 2021!!! This was certainly useful and well done for me, as someone who has never read Duras before.

This was tricky to read. Is it really psychologically complex, or just excessively vague? The translation is made even easier to read than the French original, which often has ambiguous character motives and changes of setting. Here are some, dare I say "errors", I'd say are in this debut novel that I predict wouldn't be so evident in her later work:

1. The middle of the novel, Part 2, the family's relocation to the farm, is repeatedly described as boring by the characters. Maud, the protagonist, likes reading though she finds it boring. Reading about bored characters and boring settings is boring. This is one reason why there is a major lull in the importance of the middle of the story.

2. Many characters feign desire for people or things. There is a general lack of trust, self-awareness or desire by all characters, the story is quite invariably cold. Character motives and actions often don't align in a way that is understandable, and there's no clear indication this was intentional from the narrator.

3. The narrator isn't neutral, and sometimes had debatably sexist undertones (for reasons unknown), for instance:
"Even though, in his cruel and thoughtless ways as a man, he might have killed her too,"

This is a description of people who both by their own convictions love each other. It seems strange that the narrator would suggest that a man at any time is capable of murder for no motive, even his wife. It might instead be admissible from the viewpoint of the daughter or mother in the novel — but let's think — it's the father who is passive and fades away, the younger brother is also agreeable and basically absent, and the brother's actions are all fairly predictable and 'out-in-the-open'. I find it then strange the disdainful fear the narrator would have against the unpredictable brutality of male characters, despite the more enigmatic natures of the mother and daughter on the men who (supposedly) love them? The blurred lines between who the narrator is and how close they are to understanding the characters is difficult to judge.

My personal interpretation of this story, while it may have been more of a biographical exercise than a narrative exploration, is that it shows that even after the death of the patriarch (the father), those next in the hierarchy of power (the mother and eldest sibling) are then put into conflict at a level that can be even more distressing to the younger siblings than a cruel father. And in her own words, the role of the mother is to prioritize the most troubled child. There is some wisdom on family dynamics here, but it's hidden and enmeshed in a web of vague relationships that may forever remain unresolved without more nuanced analysis of this newly translated work!

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for sending me this novel for review.

If any writer can portray a dysfunctional family vividly it is Marguerite Duras. A widow has remarried Grant-Taneran and has brought two of her children, Jacques and Maude, from her first marriage into the household. She also has Henry, a son from her second marriage. They all live together in Paris at the start of the novel and considering the composition of the Grant-Taneran family the situation is no way ideal and suggests disaster..

Duras sets the scene economically in a few pages. Maude is so alienated from her family and so ignored by her mother that one often sees her “looking out.” In fact, the novel begins with her opening the window and looking out towards the city from their apartment on the seventh floor.

Duras takes no time in informing us about the precarious financial situation of the family: they never bought furniture and their apartment was furnished with various disparate items which had been inherited over the years.

Also, we get to know about Jacques’s spendthrift and profligate ways because there is a letter from the Tavares Bank lying ominously waiting to be opened. We are also told that Mrs Grant-Taneran accepted the idle and dangerous life her son was leading. The description of Mr Taneran, thin and stooped, suggest that he is a rather weak character and his son Henry, with his childlike movements, does not want to face the family issues and suggests that he and Maude go out.

The suffocating atmosphere of the house and Maude’s life are counterpoised against the beautiful landscapes. Even though one might find fault with the plot and the characterization, Duras gives us such an evocative description of the city of the natural beauty of the countryside that the reader feels he is physically present.
In this novel, Duras seems to be experimenting with themes which will occupy her imagination as well as her novels for much of her written oeuvre. She is apparently laying the foundation for her future work where we meet over and over again, the domineering mother figure who lavishes inexplicable affection for her worthless and conniving older son, ignoring the rest of the family.

Notably the only one of Duras' novels to not be published in English, 2021 will change all that. Here we have a work in translation, a novel about French nobles and how the previously unsought Maud becomes a person of interest in a pre war love triangle.

My first thought was that this was like the Netflix special -Bridgerton - except set in France. This did not bode well.

This book is about an aristocratic family and their fiscal difficulties. Jacques is a total scab always begging for money and then blowing it all and having to ask for more. Maud looks out the window a lot. At their summer residence, John the farmer pursues Maud and so does another man and I had totally lost interest by this point.

It was the accounts of how author Marguerite Duras rose to stardom with her erotic debut The Lover that piqued my interest in this book. The Lover won the Prix Goncourt but unfortunately the writing wasn't strong enough to sustain me.

Marguerite Duras was a writer of fierce intelligence and observation who fictionalized elements of her life through her work, this being her first novel published in 1943. This however is its first appearance in English, and thanks to a wonderful translation, reads more contemporary than expected. Maud is a passionate 20 year old, trapped in a family of such extraordinary toxicity it beggars belief. Whether they are in their bourgeois apartment outside Paris or at their (failed) farm property in the southwest of France, there doesn't appear to be any affection that isn't baneful. Maud shares with her creator a family situation in which her mother rules the roost with a decidedly bias toward Maud's older brother who himself is as obnoxious as they come. Duras describes the rural life so explicitly, the reader can almost smell and hear it. Another description mentions that this is post-war France, but since it was written in 1941, that cannot be; however, there is no evidence of WWII in these pages.

The Impudent Ones is a saga of the Taneran family that starts off with a bit of intrigue. They are a family held in high regard in relation to status but in fact everything seems to be in a state of constant precariousness for them. There are parts where you feel as if you’re trudging through but the worthwhile bits are quite something. The prose regarding the French countryside and the inner workings of the farms and backstory of the families that run the farms and vineyards were appreciated.
There are definite items that have been dropped and you’re left to piece what’s happened or didn’t happen and just accept it as is.
While there were parts that I enjoyed this is 2 1/2 stars for me.

This was provided to me for review by Net Galley. Thank you very much, Net Galley.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3756537658

The Impudent Ones deserves to be reviewed from several angles, some of which will shine favorably upon Duras' inaugural novel, some of which will not.

The novel is about the trials and tribulations of a dysfunctional family. Years prior to the novel's start, the mother has remarried upon the death of her first husband and has a son and daughter from her first marriage and a second son (of minor importance) with her second husband. The father/step-father has an interesting role to play early on but then largely disappears from the novel as the family absconds to the countryside and leaves him working in Paris.

The character of the mother is defined by her children and unraveled by them, unable to fully separate herself from the dramas of their lives. She is an enabler for the oldest son, Jacques, who uses this co-dependency to his advantage. The family tip-toes around him and lets him get his way all while constantly bailing him out financially. His sister, Maud, is the novel's central character. Because she is constantly at odds with Jacques, their rivalry shapes and forms portions of the narrative.

At the age of 20, Maud is embarking on her first acts of independence once the family is settled in the country. For reasons never really explained, Maud resides alone at her family's country home while the rest of her family settles in uncomfortably at a neighbor's home. It is with this new-found freedom and desire to place some space between her life and her family that Maud becomes enmeshed with a local, George.

Duras' writing is at its height when describing the pastoral environment with details and beautiful descriptions. She also provides insightful psychological commentary about the characters.

In spite of this, there are several major flaws with the novel, something I am not used to seeing to this extent. At times the narrative is confusing and doesn't seem to make sense, as if the writer had a concept in mind and assumed a mind-reading ability from her readership. There are other times when pronouns such as 'he' are used when multiple characters are in the scene, and the lack of clarity means that some portions of the plot are hard to follow.

I initially thought that perhaps these flaws were a function of the translation; alas, the translator describes these very flaws in his remarks at the end of the novel. Apparently Duras' first novel was initially rejected from publishers because of these issues, though reworked enough that it was eventually printed. The translator also explained that in this edition, more clarity was added where possible. It appears that even Duras understood later on in her writing career the error of her ways and sometimes left out her first novel when listing her works.

There has been a renewed interest in Duras' works, which is what is driving the translation of her first novel into English after all of these years. These challenges are explain why it was never translated before. I understand that several of the themes that Duras further developed and explored through the body of her work first show up in The Impudent Ones. So, if you have read other books by Duras and enjoy her writing, this may be a worthwhile read to understand her evolution as an author, much in the way that F. Scott Fitzgerald's final, unfinished novel The Last Tycoon, is most appropriate for lovers of his prior works. Of course in that example, the novel was his final work at the height of his craft, but the similarity arises in that his notes and scribbles enhance a reader's understanding of Fitzgerald's writing process.

For those who are the uninitiated, I would not recommended this as a starting point for reading Duras. In my case, this was the first novel of hers I read and only for understanding its flaws in context am I interested in reading her other works.