Everything I had heard about this book suggested that it would be racy but it was pretty tame, and I think that speaks more to the style of the prose than the actual content. Duras' descriptions are so aloof and although the narrator is looking back on her youth and coming of age, there is no sense of nostalgia or sentimentality.

I wish I had read The Lover back when I was reading Graham Green's The Quiet American, a book I absolutely loved, and which is possibly my favorite Graham Greene novel, which is saying something. The make the perfect pairing, two sides to the same colonial Vietnamese coin. Both are also really slim and concise and could be read back-to-back in a matter of days.