Flaubert, a Life

by Geoffrey Wall

Book Overview

The life and times of the great French novelist A blond giant of a man with green eyes and a resonant actor's voice, Gustave Flaubert, perhaps the finest French writer of the nineteenth century, lived... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374156271
• ISBN13: 9780374156275
• Release Date: May 2002
• Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
• Length: 432 Pages
• Weight: 1.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.4" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

A lovely piece of work

Flaubert was a difficult man: arrogant, anal, irascible, a lonely bear of a fellow with a special gift for making enemies. Yet Geoffrey Wall manages to make him human and sympathetic. This is a first-rate biography, quick, smart, dramatic and often very funny. The MADAME BOVARY years might be handled better by Francis Steegmuller in his excellent double bio of the author and his masterpiece, but Wall's account of Flaubert's later career cannot be improved on. Giving special life to those chapters is his account of Flaubert's friendship with the immensely likable George Sand. If she can connect with this prickly man, why can't the rest of us? Their exchange of letters is one of the great literary dialogues and Wall tells this story beautifully.I began this book disliking the man despite my love of his novels. I finished it feeling fond of the man, identifying with his faults, and wanting reread everything.