I anticipated this as something that would be right up my alley as a reader, but in reality it’s just okay, and not Duras’ best work.

The writing does satisfy where the story does not quite so much, and I liked the setting and sense of place more than the characters, who weren’t nearly as well drawn as I was expecting.

Perhaps the most interesting part of this is the translator’s note, which includes a terrific little discussion of how to translate “on,” something that I think any of us who are endlessly striving to perfect our French can relate to.

"I overwhelmed myself with tragedy, it broke out everywhere, from all sides. And I’m to blame. At least you might think that, but I, I know that it doesn’t matter to me. There’s nothing to do about boredom, I’m bored, but one day I won’t be bored anymore. Soon. I’ll know that it’s not even worth the trouble. We’ll have the easy life.”
A story about a woman becoming unhinged is typically right up my alley but this just didn’t compel me as much as her other work has. Beautifully written, thoughtfully composed, just not enough plot for me.

I was completely drawn into this novel Marguerite Duras writes so lyrically brings her characters alive.The time the place the story a short fascinating read.#netgalley #bloomsbury.

𝑰 𝒂𝒎 𝒇𝒐𝒓𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒓 𝒕𝒓𝒂𝒑𝒑𝒆𝒅 𝒃𝒚 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒓𝒚, 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒇𝒂𝒄𝒆, 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒃𝒐𝒅𝒚, 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒉𝒆𝒂𝒅.

This is the first time The Easy Life, Marguerite Duras’s second novel, has been released in English, originally published in 1944. The foreword, written by Kate Zambreno, introduces what Duras was going through when she wrote the story, her husband a prisoner at Buchenwald, her brother’s death, the loss of her child… it makes sense why such a heavy grief permeates the novel. Zambreno’s thoughts are a beautiful read, don’t skip it. It’s strange to think the ambivalence that a woman can feel about her own life reaches across time to other women, her worries just as relevant today. It’s not always uncertainty, though, there are waves of fear, grief, shame, hope, hunger, boredom, passion, desire and apathy. Francine Veyrenattes is twenty-five years old, while she witnesses tragedies on her family farm, seeks a lover, one asks… what part has she played in these horrible events? In the beginning we learn that Jérôme, Francine’s uncle, is broken in two after a devastatingly brutal fight with her brother, Nicolas. Francine is proud of her little brother, intoxicated by his power. It is all because of Clémence, her brother’s wife, that the rage is born. There is righteousness there, if only she can make Nicolas realize that. What is meant to be a ‘step into freedom’ leads to unforeseen events. Their lives have, for a long time, been one of chaos and boredom in Les Bugues. Francine feels that time is gnawing at them, and the thing she thought would fix everything hasn’t, instead her brother changes, and the arrival of Luce is loaded with possibilities, not all of them good. Her parents are at a remove, there “to be able to kiss them and smell their scent”. For comfort there is Francine’s growing passion for Tiène, who asks her uncomfortable questions about her intentions that led to the violence between her brother and uncle. It isn’t long before they are lying pressed together. Francine spends a lot of time caring for her nephew, Nicholas and Clémence’s son. Death visits again, in fact, the fate of men don’t bode well here.

Wrestling with immense grief, Francine leaves her family and Tiène for T., an Atlantic beach her family once wanted to vacation at. She longs to know the sea and herself, who is slipping away. There doesn’t seem to be a reprieve from the misery she left behind and though she claims nothing is happening, and everything is calm, her mind is as restless as the ocean. Pondering her own future seems ludicrous when another lies in the ground. She thinks of what it means to be a woman, and the abyss women carry “between their legs”, that so many long to fall into. It’s very French. She has a sort of awakening when she is by the sea, maybe that is the most important part of the novel. Her thoughts become almost meditative, a long conversation with that woman staring back at herself in the mirror. Throughout the novel she mentions boredom, but in the face of the destructive things that occur (she isn’t some innocent bystander in it all either) is it really boredom or just a layer over oneself to escape the mundane? Either way, her layers fall off at the beach. It’s funny she is ‘waiting for some event’ to occur in T., what more could? Death, murder, abandonment, her parents devastated… but we do wait, for what we often don’t know. Something strange occurs, and she is asked to leave the hotel, part 3 has Francine returning home to Les Bugues, ready to face her future. It is a novel of grand desires, false serenity and existential anxieties in the rural countryside of southwestern France. It isn’t an easy life at all. What fascinates me is I am currently reading a novel and the inner dialogue of the female character mirrors that of Francine’s, decades apart. A moving read.

Publication Date: December 6, 2022

Bloomsbury USA

My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Bloomsbury USA for an advanced copy of this newly translated work into English, the second book written by Marguerite Duras.

The act of writing ,be it fiction, nonfiction, a letter to a friend or maybe someone the writer would like to consider more than just a friend, even the act of writing a check for a bill takes a lot of courage. The act of writing is a solo pursuit, but unless one is writing in a journal that is planned to be tossed in the flames before death, eventually what we write is to be read. Maybe a glimpse before recycling, every summer by students advancing in grades, maybe picked up on a remainder table. What a writer puts on paper is a captured moment of what the writer is feeling as pen hits paper, or keyboard stroke at that time. Even after edits, and maybe time, the chaos of the mind and life is shown by what is put on parchment. The Easy Life by famed French author Marguerite Duras, translated by Emma Ramadan and Olivia Baes is a reflection of the life of the author as the world she knew was turned upside down and shaken, as told in the story about a young woman surrounded by violence and loss and control.

A young woman from a small village shares a story about the death of a family member and the true story of the events that lead up to it. The death leads to more problems, more secrets and more loss, until the woman, Francine is given a chance to go away for a time to get away from it all. Instead of relaxing Francine seems to sink further and further past any feeling of control. Francine's mind never stops, foul thoughts, truth and lies merging and swirling, her days sunny but her nights not just haunted but lost. And soon she must return home.

A slim book with a lot of ideas and feelings on each page. Duras wrote during the Second World War, with her husband in a prison camp for his actions with the Resistance, and Duras finding love with another man. Duras comments that the story seemed to pour out of her, all the doubts and worries and honest fear of where her life might go, and how quickly it could all be taken away. Most of the story is written as inner dialogue, and as a narrator the character can be a tad unreliable. Eventually the story is revealed, but with a lot of subterfuge, mainly aimed at the narrator herself. Francine is a difficult character sometimes to like, and to trust, but gradually you get the idea of her life and her past, and the uncertain future that scares her. And her ideas, and thoughts kind of make sense. The story takes a few pages to get into, and is different than other works by Duras, at least to myself, but is a very different, and quiet kind of story.

A tale that tells as much about the writer as it does about the characters in the story. Beautifully written, with many great lines, and descriptions, and very well translated. Recommended for fans of Duras of course, but for fans of different kinds of stories, especially thoughtful fiction.

I had trouble getting into this book initially but ultimately enjoyed it. It's a fast read, and the translation is excellent. A psychological story centered around family and its dramas.

I love Marguerite Duras, and this did not disappoint. I agree that the latter half sounds more like the Duras of later years, as mentioned in the Introduction, but, still, I found the beginning to be delicious nonetheless. I could read her forever. Thanks so much to the publisher for the e-galley.

This book is one of the best books I have ever read. I went through so many emotions while reading it.

Released for the first time in English (in a translation by Emma Ramadan), with an introduction by American novelist Kate Zambreno, Marguerite Duras’ ironically titled The Easy Life fits in nicely with my notion of the midcentury French philosophical novel (à la Camus or de Beauvoir), where there is less plot (action) than interior monologue (reaction), but despite the out-of-timeness of this narrative, I think that Duras captured something true and enduring about the restrictions imposed (even self-imposed) on the female life and mind. As Zambreno recounts in the Intro, written in 1943 — at a time when Duras’ husband was a prisoner at Buchenwald for his participation with the French Resistance (as Duras likewise had participated) and having suffered some personal tragedies that are echoed in the plot — Duras would later report that this novel poured out of her, “as if in one breath”. Told from the POV of a twenty-five-year-old French farmgirl (the same age Duras had been when she wrote this, set in the rural locale of her own late father’s childhood), this is the story of an existential crisis and how a person might overcome both chaos and ennui to find a way — or even a reason — to live. A bit old-fashioned and cerebral, The Easy Life is less about story than philosophy but I identified with the humanity of this and am pleased to have read Duras for the first time.