![]() ![]() Maria is drinking – something she does fairly heavily throughout the book – and she’s become aware that Pierre and Claire are being consumed by their desire for each other.Īs night falls, the storm continues and the four travellers settle in corridors of the hotel to see out the night’s events. ![]() The extreme stormy weather (which is almost a character in its own right and has much to do with the direction of the narrative) has caused havoc, the hotels are full and the locals are buzzing with the fact that a man from the town, Rodrigo Paestra, has killed his wife and her lover and gone on the run. Having stopped in a small town, the book opens with Maria in a cafe drinking, while her daughter plays in the torrential rain outside. “Ten-Thirty.” tells the story of a small group on holiday in Spain: the main character is Maria, who is accompanied by her husband Pierre, her young daughter Judith and her beautiful friend Claire. Interestingly, “The Lover” was a later novel (1984) and “Ten-Thirty…” was originally published in French in 1960, so I was certainly expecting the stylistic differences I found although there were similarities in my reactions to her writing as we shall see! And certainly, “Ten-Thirty…” is novella length at 108 pages and so easy enough to read in one sitting.ĭuras was of course a prolific woman, known as a novelist, playwright, screenwriter, essayist, and experimental filmmaker. Looking back through the blog, I can see that I picked this up in 2016 from Any Amount of Books in Charing Cross Road on a lovely day trip to London (I remember those well…) I had previously read one Duras book ( “The Lover”) which didn’t really gel at the time but I was prepared to give the author another try. Typically enough, however, my first read for #WITMonth is a book which wasn’t in the stacks but which has been lurking in the TBR for quite a while now – “Ten-Thirty on a Summer Night” by Marguerite Duras (translated by Anne Borchardt). August is, of course, Women in Translation month, and as I shared in my end of July post, I have huge stacks of potential books to choose from. ![]()
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