Book Review: Moderato Cantabile is an impressionist painting, where nothing is clear, everything is blurred, distorted, seen through veils. This is a book that may be better understood emotionally than intellectually, and certainly isn't for the plot-addicted. Yet for those who enjoy literary analysis, Moderato Cantabile will provide an abundance of food for thought, depths to plumb and threads to unravel. It would be an excellent thesis subject. Marguerite Duras' writing is spare, sparse, spartan. Restrained and controlled. The story is intense and focused, working toward a key emotional moment, a visceral epiphany, that centers the story. The book is modern, allusive, but it's not difficult to divine this story of a wealthy woman who wants to venture beyond her current life, but knows the tragic result of risking that journey even before she begins. Class, women's roles, appearance, intoxication, individualism, are just a few of the issues explored during a single week as a young mother accompanies her son and entertains tentative discussions while drinking wine with a working-class man in a tavern. Throughout Moderato Cantabile there is a building tension, suspense, stalking, a fear of violence. In a sort of authorial wizardry, all elements function simultaneously as symbols and as all-too-real complex flesh and blood people. Duras has paradoxically created something both intricate and deceptively simple. Quietly, subtly, thought-provoking. [5★]
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