The Easy Life

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What to expect

Bloomsbury presents The Easy Life by Marguerite Duras, read by Caroline Hewitt.

'One of the 20th century's greatest thinkers and prose stylists' New York Times

'A novel of the disquieting contours of family, and of the mind, and of life unceasing even in the midst of death by one of the most important, visionary writers of all time' Amina Cain, author of Indelicacy

WITH A FOREWORD BY KATE ZAMBRENO

There’s nothing to do about boredom, I’m bored, but one day I won’t be bored anymore. Soon I’ll know that it’s not even worth the trouble. We’ll have the easy life.

Twenty-five-year-old Francine Veyrenattes, confined to the family farm, already feels that life is passing her by. But after Francine lets slip a terrible secret, culminating in the violent deaths of her brother and uncle, her world is shattered.

Fleeing the farm for the seaside, Francine finds herself disintegrating. Lying in the sun with her toes in the sand, she restlessly wishes for things to be somehow easier, to have a life worth living.

But then the calm and quiet is broken yet again – by another tragedy and a senseless death, in which Francine finds herself implicated. Cast out of paradise, and stranded between her home and the rest of the world, she must confront her rapidly dissolving sense of self if she is to find a way to survive.

'It’s a masterpiece, and a little known, if not unknown, masterpiece … Any serious reader of this author’s work must begin with this novel' YVES BERGER

Critics Review

Reading The Easy Life, there is a sense of riding on the edge of a dark wave, a brilliant intensity only Marguerite Duras could bring into existence. A novel of the disquieting contours of family, and of the mind, and of life unceasing even in the midst of death. How exhilarating to be able to encounter Francine Veyrenattes, a character I won't forget, and for the first time in English, this early work by one of the most important, visionary writers of all time
AMINA CAIN
In this powerful, immaculately translated novel, we watch the young Marguerite Duras move from the fierce, iron rigors of narrative to her more characteristic style of relentless introspection. This book, which she wrote in her twenties, already reveals all her powers
EDMUND WHITE
Praise for Marguerite Duras: By turns ardent, raging, sensual and embittered ... A dreamlike, savage world, in which the great themes of love, war and death found their most recklessly impassioned chronicler
Observer
A writer who believed that understanding suffering was an act of the imagination
New Yorker
Very beautiful, highly intelligent, enjoyable and original
Sunday Times

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