Name: Flaubert's Parrot
Rating: 3.59375 (16 reviews)
ISBN: 9780307961433

Julian Barnes

Flaubert's parrot: Relates a cranky amateur scholar's search for the truth about Gustave Flaubert, and the obsession of this detective whose life seems to oddly mirror those of Flaubert's characters. History of the world in 10 1/2 chapters: An eccentiric, playfully skewed, surprisingly comprehensive chronicle of life on planet Earth. A novel whose threads of coincidence and hidden connection are woven into a narrative tapestry brilliant with wit, intelligence, and emotion.

A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters

Flaubert's Parrot

A kind of detective story, relating a cranky amateur scholar's search for the truth about Gustave Flaubert, and the obsession of this detective whose life seems to oddly mirror those of Flaubert's characters.

Coming back a day later to change my review to 4 stars instead of 3.5. The book deals with a really interesting, and simple question: 'How do we really know someone? By what means?' It's silly at times, pedantic at others, and in one chapter it is absolutely gut wrenching. Overall I didn't totally enjoy the experience of reading the book, but that's just one aspect of reading isn't it? It's an excellent book, that leaves me thinking more about some things that I otherwise wouldn't. That's good literature for you: 'News that stays news.'

Gabe Cortez

Thaddeus Cortez

Andrew John Kinney

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.

Rose Stanley

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

Which of two stuffed parrots was the inspiration for one of Flaubert's greatest stories? Why did the master keep changing the colour of Emma Bovary's eyes? And why should it matter so much to Geoffrey Braithwaite, a retired doctor haunted by a private secret? In Flaubert's Parrot, Julian Barnes spins out a multiple mystery of obsession and betrayal (both scholarly and romantic) and creates an exuberant enquiry into the ways in which art mirrors life and then turns around to shape it. 'A gem: an unashamed literary novel that is also unashamed to be readable, and broadly entertaining. Bravo!' John Irving 'Endless food for thought, beautifully written . . . A tour de force' Germaine Greer 'Delightful and enriching . . . A book to read' Joseph Heller 'A dazzling achievement . . . remarkably inventive as well as audacious' Walter Abish 'A delight . . . Handsomely the best novel published in England in 1984' John Fowles

Sabine

Nick Rehmus

Ioana Kardos

Fran Lewis

Philipp

Roel Vandenhoeck

Emmett

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction Flaubert's Parrot deals with Flaubert, parrots, bears and railways; with our sense of the past and our sense of abroad; with France and England, life and art, sex and death, George Sand and Louise Colet, aesthetics and redcurrant jam; and with its enigmatic narrator, a retired English doctor, whose life and secrets are slowly revealed. A compelling weave of fiction and imaginatively ordered fact, Flaubert's Parrot is by turns moving and entertaining, witty and scholarly, and a tour de force of seductive originality.

Flaubert's Parrot A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters

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