Anne Desbaresdes, wife of a wealthy factory owner in a French port town, brings her young son to his weekly piano lesson, where the teacher keeps telling him to play a sonatina marked moderato cantabile. During one lesson a woman is shot dead in a café nearby, and Anne becomes fixated on the crime. She starts meeting a man named Chauvin in the same café, and they talk over wine about how the murder might have happened. Duras keeps the dialogue sparse and repetitive.
Readers who enjoy spare, atmospheric French fiction of the nouveau roman era will find a study in desire and class constraint. The novel asks for attention to what goes unsaid, and rewards it.
Deep, inward-looking, open-ended and thought-provoking; a moderate read.
Best for readers like The Literary Connoisseur. Which reader are you?
- ISBN
- 9782707303141
- Language
- FR
