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edwardian_girl_next_door's review
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
A picture of Paris, with lurid flashes of decadence and sordidness in equal measure, filled with corrupted, tragic, kniving characters. As much as I was looking forward to reading it, the scandal was overdone and weighed down by other details and plotlines. My other reasons for disliking it are as follows:
This book is very specifically placed in time and location -- France after the 1840s -- and was clearly written for people during (or at least familiar with) that time. I am not one of those people; and as a result, I had a hard time keeping up with all the witty references, allusions, and bureaucratic spiderweb of pre-Second Republic France. It added an extra layer that made the plot and characters harder to access.
Speaking of plot and characters, I think de Balzac ended up hurting his storytelling by involving too many characters, and by making the interconnections between them far too complex. Perhaps it's a literary convention that hasn't aged well -- I know I'm fairly unused to it, but given what I've read of Dickens it might have landed better with readers of the era. Anyway, trying to follow the story on top of remembering how everyone is related was exhausting.
Finally, the ending was majorly unsatisfying. The beginning had me hooked, but as I wore through to the inevitable downfall, I lost my patience to care. Don't read this novel if you like likeable characters! Everyone sucks and repeats their mistakes, and that's the point (it's Realist literature, after all). But it wasn't compelling enough to justify itself for me, hence my "meh" rating. I think I'll be donating this book, as I don't think it's worth the trouble of revisiting the characters anytime soon.
This book is very specifically placed in time and location -- France after the 1840s -- and was clearly written for people during (or at least familiar with) that time. I am not one of those people; and as a result, I had a hard time keeping up with all the witty references, allusions, and bureaucratic spiderweb of pre-Second Republic France. It added an extra layer that made the plot and characters harder to access.
Speaking of plot and characters, I think de Balzac ended up hurting his storytelling by involving too many characters, and by making the interconnections between them far too complex. Perhaps it's a literary convention that hasn't aged well -- I know I'm fairly unused to it, but given what I've read of Dickens it might have landed better with readers of the era. Anyway, trying to follow the story on top of remembering how everyone is related was exhausting.
Finally, the ending was majorly unsatisfying. The beginning had me hooked, but as I wore through to the inevitable downfall, I lost my patience to care. Don't read this novel if you like likeable characters! Everyone sucks and repeats their mistakes, and that's the point (it's Realist literature, after all). But it wasn't compelling enough to justify itself for me, hence my "meh" rating. I think I'll be donating this book, as I don't think it's worth the trouble of revisiting the characters anytime soon.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Classism, Medical content, Death, Racism, Toxic relationship, Infidelity, Murder, Gaslighting, and Grief
Moderate: Slavery, Suicide, Death of parent, Adult/minor relationship, Pedophilia, and Religious bigotry
Minor: Antisemitism, Physical abuse, Pregnancy, and War
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