Earlier in the year I read my first novel by Marguerite
Duras, a strange but compelling work called The
Sailor from Gibraltar. I loved it. Duras has a classy style of writing,
economical, sparse, open like a light, airy room. Having experienced her excellent writing previously, I had great expectations of The Ravishing of Lol Stein and in that respect this short novel doesn't disappoint. And yet, I can't say I loved it. It's a strange one, that's for sure.
The story is told by Jack Hold, a doctor with an obsessive,
destructive love for Lol and centres around a single event and the ongoing
impact of that event on Lol and the people around her. As a young woman, Lol is
jilted by her lover, Michael Richardson, at a ball held at a casino. With her
is Tatiana Karl, her best friend. Together they watch until morning as Michael
Richardson falls in love with another woman, Anne-Marie Stretter. Something
changes in the hours of the night, something that transforms Lol completely. This
event sets in place a kind of voyeuristic repetition cycle in which Lol observes the
affair taking place between Tatiana Karl and Jack Hold and then in turn takes
Tatiana’s place as Jack’s lover. So history repeats: Tatiana becomes the young
Lol, Jack Hold becomes Michael Richardson, Lol becomes Anne-Marie Stretter. Lol’s
illness requires a repetition, a continual repeating of events. The story
culminates in Jack and Lol consummating their relationship in a trip to Town
Beach, Lol reliving the places where her ‘fall’ occurred, replacing it with the
Tatiana-Jack-Lol love triangle.
Or does it? From the beginning the circumstances and origins
of Lol’s mental state are brought into question primarily through the ‘evidence’
of Tatiana Karl. As early as page 2 we are told ‘Tatiana does not believe that this fabled Town Beach ball was so overwhelmingly
responsible for Lol Stein’s illness. No, Tatiana Karl traces the origins of
that illness back further, further even than the beginning of their friendship.
They were latent in Lol, but kept from emerging by the deep affection with
which she had always been surrounded both at home and, later, at school. She
says that in school – and she wasn’t the only person to think so – there was
already something lacking in Lol, something which kept her from being, in
Tatiana’s words, “there”.’ Yet only one further page later we learn ‘I no longer believe a word Tatiana says. I’m
convinced of absolutely nothing.’ And then, in the next sentence, the whole
story itself falls under question ‘Here
then, in full, and all mixed together, both this false impression which Tatiana
Karl tells about and what I have been able to imagine about that night at the
Town Beach casino. Following which I shall relate my own story of Lol Stein.’
And that is what we get, Jack Hold’s ‘story’ of Lol Stein. The
story of Lol’s fall, Lol’s history as told through the voice of Jack Hold who
knows only what he has heard by rumour and may, in fact, be inventing the rest
takes on the quality of a myth, a half-heard Chinese whisper. The entire novel
takes on this quality, myth and rumour, a thin surface of fact laced with
fiction. And the whole thing is overlaid with a strange kind of duality, a
juxtaposition of the cold, unreachable nature of Lol against the heat of the
summer and Jack’s obsessive desire for her. In the end it is impossible to
decipher what is real and what is fiction (accepting of course that it is all
fiction) with characters becoming interlaced and all, to a degree, unreachable,
locked in their own perception of the events.
Duras writes beautifully, in crisp, descriptive sentences.
There’s a clarity in her writing which is deceptive, particularly deceptive as
it is what she doesn’t say that captivates. In the end, I felt there was just a
little too much unsaid, it was all just a little too unreachable, I wasn’t sure
I understood it. A strange, intriguing little book, hard to follow, strangely
cold and at the same time almost oppressively sensuous. I’m still not sure how
I feel about it, but sometimes that is the mark of the best kinds of books. One
to read again.
The Ravishing of Lol Stein receives an uncertain 7 out of 10
Biis.
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