Flaw-Bert’s parrot is pretty great!

4.5 stars. I'm very happy I read Julian Barnes' novelistic homage to Flaubert for a number of reasons, not least because I now realize how badly I misunderstood Madame Bovary in my first reading. Barnes brings Flaubert (his hero) to life in a way that a conventional biography would likely struggle to do. And Barnes knows his subject so well that one can trust him completely in his revivification of the great author. The plot, of an elderly doctor obsessively researching Flaubert, is interesting, but the story of Flaubert himself really takes center stage, and I'm happy it did. The many quotes from Gustave are often hilarious and always carefully spoken. Flaubert was uncannily prescient about what was to come, and he was not an optimist; Barnes uses this to comedic effect in "debating" a critic of Le Grand Homme: the critic charges Flaubert with hating progress, and Barnes' protagonist says, "In his defense, I cite the Twentieth Century". At one point, Flaubert says (to paraphrase), "I occasionally look at a newspaper to see what fresh calamity awaits. I do not say that we are dancing on the edge of a volcano, no, we are dancing on the wooden seat of a latrine, and I believe it is more than a touch rotten, and we will soon fall through into nineteen centuries of shit. There will be quite a lot of shouting." Flaubert's unique approach to life (he has a sense of humor similar to DeGaulle's) is brilliantly illustrated with quotes and historical fiction that is usually about 90% history to 10% fiction. One of the things that comes through clearly is how hard Flaubert worked to find exactly the right word or phrase, and how seriously he took his craft. Flaubert's desire for clarity rose to the level of frustration with language itself: "Language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity." This book is all the biography I need of Flaubert, and it has inspired me to read Bovary again, with fresh eyes.

Witty, poignant, caustic. But how much is actually true?