Moderato Cantabile

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Moderato Cantabile is one of the many novels written by Marguerite Duras.

It concerns the life of a middle-class woman, Anne Desbaresdes, and her varying relationships with her child, her husband, the piano teacher Madame Giraud and Chauvin. Chauvin is a working-class man who is currently unemployed and whiles away his time in the café near to the apartment where Anne Desbaresdes' child takes piano lessons with Madame Giraud. After a fatal shooting in the café, Anne and Chauvin discover the relationship between the lovers and try to reason why the man shot the woman. Anne frequently returns to the café, before returning to her middle-class life and home, further down the Boulevard de la Mer, which in itself represents the social divide between the working- and middle-classes.

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This book was published in 1958 and marked a rupture in her writing style, changing from realism into existentialism. ^{[citation needed]}