Summer Rain (1992)

Summer Rain, a short novel by the veteran French writer (The Lover, The War) describes an uneducated immigrant family living in suburban Paris. When the eldest son, a genius, begins learning by osmosis (he stands outside the local schoolhouse to absorb his lessons), incest, death, and family disintegration follow. Duras writes in a silky, unembellished prose, spinning a sticky web of claustrophobic relationships. Although her thesis-that book learning is unnatural and destructive — is something the well-educated French can afford to ponder, it seems elitist in the U.S., where higher learning is often not an option. B