The Easy Life
-
- $13.99
Publisher Description
For the first time in English, literary icon Marguerite Duras's foundational masterpiece about a young woman's existential breakdown in the deceptively peaceful French countryside.
The Easy Life is the story of Francine Veyrenattes, a twenty-five-year-old woman who already feels like life is passing her by. After witnessing a series of tragedies on her family farm, she alternates between intense grief and staggering boredom as she discovers a curious detachment in herself, an inability to navigate the world as others do. Hoping to be cleansed of whatever ails her, she travels to the coast to visit the sea. But there she finds herself unraveling, uncertain of what is inside her. Lying in the sun with her toes in the sand by day while psychologically dissolving in her hotel room by night, she soon reaches the peak of her inner crisis and must grapple with whether and how she can take hold of her own existence.
An extraordinary examination of a young woman's estrangement from the world that only Marguerite Duras could have written, The Easy Life is a work of unsettling beauty and insight, and a bold, spellbinding journey into the depths of the human heart.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The intense second novel by Prix Goncourt winner Duras (The Lover), first published in 1944 and translated into English for the first time, involves a young woman dealing with a series of tragedies. Francine Veyrenattes, 25, lives a staid life on her family farm, where she's close with her brother, Nicolas. After Francine learns their uncle Jêrome is having an affair with Nicolas's wife, she tells Nicolas and goads him into attacking Jêrome, which he does. Jêrome's subsequent death prompts more devastating consequences and Francine flee to a seaside town where she spends her grief-stricken days in an emotional haze, and nights alone in her hotel room, ruminating on her existence. She asks what it means to be a person, a woman, and a body in a world that seeks to destroy and devalue those things, as well as what it means to be a person with a story as opposed to having a simpler life without tragedy. Though some of the narration can feel a bit redundant, Duras (1914–1996) drops more than enough sharp revelations to carry the reader along. Though it's not quite at the level of her masterworks, it offers glimpses of the heights to come.
