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224Women in French Studies that they refer the reader/viewer to blank spaces, paradox, and "an enunciation of the ongoing aesthetic process" (95), a point that other authors take up in analyses ofDuras' prose. Silences, absences, or contradictions between what is spoken and what is seen are integral to the thematic as well as structural dimensions ofDuras' texts, and these characteristics inspire readings of everything from trauma to écriture feminine among her critics. Carol J. Murphy's essay, which takes as its point of departure La Vie matérielle and weaves together over a dozen of Duras' texts, addresses a concern common to several of the essays in her analysis of the "absence ofrepresentation" in even those works by Duras which are rife with images or concerned with material objects and specific events. Murphy's observation that material places and "real" events underlie yet are displaced by Duras' writing supports as well Laurie Vickroy's analysis ofL'Amant, in which she shows how Duras' writing is mediatory rather than revelatory. Vickroy argues that Duras enacts memory, creating elliptical structures ofidentity, rather than concretizing a series ofevents or essentializing subjectivity in her autobiographical novel. Thus, while the quality of all ofthe essays included in the volume is somewhat uneven overall, the stronger contributions work together to touch on critical questions regarding Duras' writing as well as her cinema. All ofthe essays are written in English, and several provide English translations ofquotes taken from French texts. On the whole, the essays presume a basic familiarity with Duras' work and a general knowledge ofpsychoanalytic, feminist, and film theory. The volume's coverage ofnumerous individual works by Duras, in addition to a piece on RobertAntelme and three bookreviews ofDuras criticism, makes it an interesting critical overview, although scholars writing about Duras will want to refer to the volume primarily in order to draw on individual essays on the topics ofgenre, death, or Durassian desire as we continue to explore the wealth ofwords and images left to us by Marguerite Duras. Erica L. JohnsonUniversity of California, Davis Dominique Rolin. The Garden ofDelights, trans, by Monique F. Nagern. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. Belgium Francophone Library. 1998. ISBN: 08204 -3819-7. Pp. 145. Born in 1913, Belgian novelist Dominique Rolin moved to France in 1946 in order to write, and in 1952 won the Prix Fémina for her novel Le Souffle (The Pulse ofLife). Her latest novel, published in France in 1994 asJardin d'agrément, came out in English in 1998 under the title of The Garden ofDelights. The English title alludes to Bosch's painting and attempts to seize the spirit of the work if not the exact French connotation of"pleasure/leisure garden." Dominique Rolin seems to follow the tradition of Duras and Sarraute who, in their later years, tend to be more truthful about their past, thus turning to "purer" autobiographical pieces, rather than novels with intricate relations between the writer, self, and female protagonist. Book Reviews225 The novel has a circular motion, where the beginning and the end merge, not only in concepts and symbols, but also in the portrayal ofthe young Domi merging with the older writer, Dominique Rolin. It is as ifthe creative selfhas to adhere more closely to the reality of the fictionalized character. In the "third age," one tends to take stock of the situation, bringing back to light hidden parts of one's life. Rolin uses a structure, which alternates at each chapter between "Here" and "Far" to return to crucial moments of happiness or struggle in childhood and adulthood. Words are seen as children that one has to tame, maladjusted young ones, or "paid flunkies" (13). Like rebellious children, they want to seek revenge and repeat the author's path and attitude towards her mother, Esther. In the long run, children and words win, since children and words usually outlive the parents and the author. Introducing the theme of death, words pose the question of Rolin's own death, writing the present book at more than 80 years of age and drawing peace from it. It becomes a pleasurable garden when one can "agree," where the two pieces of "here" and "far" concur and...

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