The Sailor from Gibraltar by Marguerite Duras
French fiction
Original title – Le Marin de Gibraltar
Translator – Barbara Bray
Source – Personal copy
This was another book that fell off the list from 1952. It took a while to browse the list of books from that year and find this, which is an early work by Marguerite Duras. She is best known for her book “The Lover,” but also wrote many other books during her time. A number of them were also translated into English by Barbara Bray, a champion of French literature who supported many writers in the 1950s and 1960s. She also worked very closely with Beckett!I have reviewed three other books by Duras since starting the blog. She is a writer whose books are different from each other, but love lost, desire and the lack of desire, as well as the places she writes about, all feature in the books I have read!
The first day I went from our hotel to the cafeteria. I intended to have an iced coffee and then go for a walk round the town. I stopped there the whole morning-Jacqueline found me there at midday, drinking my sixth beer. She was furious. What was the point of being in Florence for the first time in your life and spending the whole morning in a café? “This afternoon,” I said, “I’ll try this afternoon.” It was understood that we’d each go about on our own and just meet for meals. So after lunch she went off again. I went back to the cafete-ria, which was near the restaurant. The time went quickly. At seven o’clock in the evening I was still there. Jacqueline found me drinking a crème de menthe this time. She was furious again. “If I move it’ll kill me,” I told her. I was sure of it, but I thought it would be better the next day.
His visit to florence where he meets Anne
This book is again like yesterday’s, a sort of quest in a way. The book is told by a disillusioned French official who has spent the last eight years of his life in a job that merely rubber-stamps forms. He is also caught up with a mistress whom he has slowly grown to hate. So when the chance comes to work on a boat called the Giubraltor as they leave Florence. The ship is captained by the beautiful but lonely young American, Anne. She is haunted by the memory of a young sailor whom she has since fallen in love with So they are now endlessly sailing for what is now just known as the “Sailor from Gibraltar|”The story has a thriller feel to it as it seems to twist as we find out from are charac ter more about Anne and the man she is hunting for! The tale unfolds as we find lose , love and murder along the way
“Tell me about the ship,” I said. “About the Gibraltar.”
“The ship’s not the most important thing.”
“No, they told me it was a man. Was he from Gibraltar?”
“No. He wasn’t really from anywhere. Perhaps,” she added, “per-haps I could stay until the day after tomorrow.”
What had I been thinking? When they’re at sea, Eolo had said, she must make do with the sailors. My hand wasn’t trembling now, and I didn’t feel faint any longer at holding her in my arms.
“And you don’t live with him any more?”
“No.”
“You’ve left him?”
as he learns more about the ship and heads off with Anne on her quest
I am a massive fan of Duras; she captures a sort of longing and loss of desire very well in her work. But she has also captured a kind of thriller feel in this book, as the events involving all the characters are slowly revealed throughout. You are never quite sure as the reader which way she will take the book. This is one of the books that follows what happens when you try to capture that moment of a perfect glance and the seemingly perfect man or woman. I was thinking about what would happen if James Blunt had found that girl in the station; he was inspired to write ‘You’re Beautiful’ about her. What if Jesse and Celine in Before Sunset had tried to see each other again? This is what this book captures: those moments that are moments, but what happens when you don’t know that they’re madness, driven by a desire and told from the perspective of a man escaping his own demons.It is a surreal tale of twom people on a boat for very different reasons that can be very dark at times, I saw A review compare the pacing and some of the setting in the book to Patrica Highsmiths The Talented Mr Ripley although this vcame out before that book it has similar feel to the book and film that never quite owning everything about ripley is echoed here somewhat! Have you read any books by Marguerite Duras?
