NPR and The Sailor from Gibraltar

Jessa Crispin (the woman behind Bookslut) wrote a great reivew of Marguerite Duras’s The Sailor from Gibraltar) for NPR:

But this is a novel by the cerebral French writer and filmmaker Marguerite Duras, so nothing much happens at all. And it’s all the more thrilling because of it. There are long philosophical conversations about love and obsession and identity, and characters stare out at the sea for what seems like hours. A woman’s mussed hair says volumes about her inner turmoil, and there is no conclusion to speak of. It’s not a book to rush through. It’s a book to be savored while drinking cognac and smoking pretentious cigarettes. [. . .]

“One’s always more or less looking for something,” Duras writes in Gibraltar, “for something to arise in the world and come toward you.” Whether that’s a lost love or a reason not to go home again, Duras captures the longing that infects her ‘haracters — and all of us from time to time — with elegant prose and a story that will set you blissfully adrift.

Absolutely. And in addition to the review, NPR has an excerpt from the book as well.