“They dress just for the sake of dressing. The Lover also offers an account of the world of the white colonisers, specifically of the women. She is barely yet a woman, blankly unconcerned, alive only in the present, and utterly ruthless, in that way only the young can be. She mistreats him, exposes him to the ridicule of her brothers. The girl, never named, only ever “she” or “I”, is almost disdainful of her lover, disgusted by his abject lust. It contains a dazzling depiction of the immense power in which a woman can bathe when she’s the object of such adoration – a first-hand perspective rarely captured in writing, at least in my experience. It’s the story of a 15-year-old girl from a French family, embarking on a sexual relationship with the son of a Chinese millionaire, who becomes painfully enraptured with her. Duras recreates the warm haze of the Saigon of her childhood so powerfully, steam rises from the pages.
Tours are offered by the Dong Thap Tourist Company who also manage the property.The Lover was written when Duras was 70, and floats delicately in that soft, nebulous space between memoir and make-believe. Duras, Mr Le and his families, both immediate and extended, and other memorabilia including that of the film in which, I believe, the house was used as a set. Our private tour started with tea and dried, sugared ginger slices served in the house's ornate interior which features many photos of Ms. More and more visitors, Asian and increasingly Western, visit this site in a tour called, "Following the footsteps of 'The Lover'", which includesTrung Vuong Sa Dec Primary School - where Duras' mother taught school from 1924 to 1930 - and the Ong Quach Pagoda. Duras died in Paris in 1996 after a long literary career.
An accomplished writer, "The Lover" was one of Duras' later works published twelve years after Le's death. Le and his family used the house until 1972 when Le died and his family moved abroad. Le maintained his love for the girl and learns much later that the girl loved him deeply as well. Le marries another, more "suitable" woman and has a family. Le succumbs to his father's pressure and ends the relationship and the girl moves to France at 18. However, Le's father disapproved of the relationship due to their social class differences. Basically, the story is of a 15 yr old Vietnamese girl who has an lingering tryst with a 27 yr old Huynh Thuy Le, son of a Chinese business magnate in 1929. The "Lover's House" has a unique blend of French and Chinese architecture. Built in 1885 by Le's father, this house is a key setting for Marguerite Duras' acclaimed autobiograhpical novel, "L'amant" ("The Lover") which was later made into a film of the same name.
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