"For the first time in English, from the literary icon and author of the classic novel The Lover, Marguerite Duras's foundational masterpiece about a young woman's existential breakdown in the deceptively peaceful French countryside. The Easy Life is the story of Francine Veyrenattes, a twenty-five-year-old woman who already feels like life is passing her by. Existence on her family farm is routine, mundane. But when she learns her uncle is having an affair with her brother's wife, she decides to bring the secret out into the open and shatter the seeming tranquility of their lives. Tragedy ensues, as Francine expected, but even amidst her grief, she continues to experience a curious detachment, an inability to navigate the world as others do. Hoping to be cleansed of what ails her, she travels to the coast to visit the sea, where she finds herself fully unraveling. Lying in the sun with her toes in the sand by day and psychologically dissolving in her hotel room by night, soon her inner crisis reaches its peak and she must grapple with whether to take hold of her own existence, or instead to surrender to the easy life. An extraordinary examination of a young woman's estrangement from the world that only Marguerite Duras could have written, The Easy Life is a work of unsettling beauty and insight, and a bold, spellbinding journey into the depths of the human heart"-- Provided by publisher.