THE LOVER

Kathleen Gati's sweet voice and precise delivery movingly evoke the unnamed French girl who, in this most famous of Marguerite Duras's novels, describes her clandestine love affair with an older Chinese man in 1950s Indochina (now Vietnam). Winner of the 1984 Prix Goncourt, the brief tale explores class identity, passion, racism, and self-reliance in spare yet descriptive prose. Gati speaks in a lower pitch with crystalline pronunciation that emphasizes the ends of words. Both choices add to the story's tension as she conjures a girl becoming a woman who shares a long-held secret--a secret whose significance she hasn't quite resolved. Writer Maxine Hong Kingston's new introduction to this edition, also read by Gati, offers interesting background information and context. A.C.S. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine [Published: JUNE 2023]