Duras has always maintained this link with God, indulging in the ambiguity and the nostalgia that she voices in all her books and interviews. God is everywhere in her texts, in the children, in this fragile, scarcely perceptible unknown, a mysterious presence in her night, in the miracles of love, in the skies above the estuaries of the Seine, in the unpredictable movements of the sea, in Yann Andrea's sea-washed gaze, in her walk, with her hand in Yann's. God circulates beneath the little brother's smooth skin just as the water flowed from earthenware jars, suddenly appearing in the miracle of the book being composed, by some secret alchemy. God is so present in the writing that his name has 'become', she says, 'a common noun' – 'it is everything, it is nothing', but it is an appeal, and remains the object of her quest.

She always appeals to the religious, 'this silent impulse, stronger than anyone, and unjustifiable', the incomprehensible staring us in the face, a force that language cannot possibly describe, stumbling miserably, time after time, something unknown that can only be expressed in a stuttering voice, through silence, or words gasped out and, for want of anything better, finding breath enough to say: 'The noise, you know? … of God? … that thing? …'

Virondelet, Duras