Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.48 AVERAGE
3.48 AVERAGE
Disclaimer: I love Stendhal. His "Le rouge et le noir" is one of my favourite books and works as a great and vaguely soapy historical (and unconventional) romance with a great main character who is much, much too aware of (and reluctant to acknowledge) his flaws as he climbs the social ladder. Seriously, go read that book.
The Charterhouse of Parma, however, is good in a different way. It's a masterful work, of course, but perhaps a little less cohesive than Stendhal's other famous novel. It is at its best in certain episodes but feels a little uneven. The court intrigues at the toy court of Parma are the best part of the book, although "Dodo Bird/Fabrice's Adventures at the Battle of Waterloo" come in a close second.
I get the impression that Stendhal may not have had enough time to focus on his main character--and that's assuming that Fabrice del Dongo is actually the main character. His aunt, Gina, duchess of Sanseverina, makes a much more interesting protagonist and receives more development. Things might have felt more balanced if Stendhal had developed a plot that (a) put Fabrice on more equal footing with the duchess and (b) gave more depth to Fabrice's love story and character arc. As it stands, Stendhal's writing does a good job of making Fabrice's love story compelling despite little to no reason to support the idea. Stendhal is just THAT good at character writing. But in the end, all we have of Fabrice and Clelia's love story is a sketch--artful and full of potential, but ultimately unfinished and a touch unpolished. Maybe it works best that way, since there can be charm in a pencil drawing. But it doesn't properly compare to the masterly "Le rouge et le noir."
My own two cents: I think part 1 works fine, but part 2 is where things go a little awry, specifically where Fabrice escapes his prison. Fabrice's escape feels very anticlimactic, and it basically poured a bucket of cold water over the sparks of excitement set by Fabrice's discovery of love. Don't even get me started on the rest of the novel from that point, it just spiraled from there. I can't really speak to why Stendhal wrote things this way, whether it was his own decision or that of impatient editors, but clearly something happened that hastened the denouement in this way. Bit of a waste, but still. Don't worry, Stendhal, your writing still gets me 100% absorbed in your characters and their deepest, most intimate thoughts.
Recommended for people who like Napoleonic (and especially post-napoleonic) history, Stendhal and other romantic/pre-realist novelist enthusiasts, and good character writing (although unevenly applied here).
The Charterhouse of Parma, however, is good in a different way. It's a masterful work, of course, but perhaps a little less cohesive than Stendhal's other famous novel. It is at its best in certain episodes but feels a little uneven. The court intrigues at the toy court of Parma are the best part of the book, although "Dodo Bird/Fabrice's Adventures at the Battle of Waterloo" come in a close second.
I get the impression that Stendhal may not have had enough time to focus on his main character--and that's assuming that Fabrice del Dongo is actually the main character. His aunt, Gina, duchess of Sanseverina, makes a much more interesting protagonist and receives more development. Things might have felt more balanced if Stendhal had developed a plot that (a) put Fabrice on more equal footing with the duchess and (b) gave more depth to Fabrice's love story and character arc. As it stands, Stendhal's writing does a good job of making Fabrice's love story compelling despite little to no reason to support the idea. Stendhal is just THAT good at character writing. But in the end, all we have of Fabrice and Clelia's love story is a sketch--artful and full of potential, but ultimately unfinished and a touch unpolished. Maybe it works best that way, since there can be charm in a pencil drawing. But it doesn't properly compare to the masterly "Le rouge et le noir."
Recommended for people who like Napoleonic (and especially post-napoleonic) history, Stendhal and other romantic/pre-realist novelist enthusiasts, and good character writing (although unevenly applied here).
Set in Italy at the time of Waterloo, Stendhal's The Charterhouse of Parma is the imaginary biography of Fabrizio del Dongo. Handsome, aristocratic and charmingly naïve, Fabrizio is a "hero unaware," his destiny shaped by the sensational events going on arund him - at Waterloo, at Lake Como and at Parma, where Fabrizio falls in love with the beautiful Clelia and becomes involved in the almost literal backstabbings of the court.
Stendhal's achievement is to have created a great novel around a small hero. The exquisite art with which he paints his characters and their states of mind (his amoral but bewitching Duchessa Sanseverina, for example), the dramatically episodic structure of the novel, the famous description of the battle of Waterloo: these are rendered here by MRB Shaw into an English translation that is stylishly fluent and precise.
I loved Stendhal's Scarlet and Black. Loved it. So I've been anticipating this book for quite some time. I was disappointed. I was so utterly uncaptivated by it that it took me a solid month to get through it, and it's not that long a book. I just didn't find it nearly as compelling as Scarlet and Black, and that has been such a disappointment. I think it was the combination of Fabrizio's lack of any real awareness of what's going on around him for much of the book, along with the relentless court dramas that just bored the crap out of me. I didn't care what heppened to him, and I really didn't care about all the court crap that was mostly just ridiculous little vanities of the sovereigns. If the story had started much later, and focused more on the love story between Fabrizio and Clelia, maybe it would have been a little better, but by the time that had started, I was already thoroughly bored with him, so even that didn't really suck me in too much. And the ending of it seemed almost like Stendhal ran out of steam or something, because it was all, "Three years later, this incident happened, and then everybody died." What the hell?
So basically, I was intensely disappointed with this book, and will now move on to something that comes highly recommended by several people I know, so hopefully that will be better.
Stendhal's achievement is to have created a great novel around a small hero. The exquisite art with which he paints his characters and their states of mind (his amoral but bewitching Duchessa Sanseverina, for example), the dramatically episodic structure of the novel, the famous description of the battle of Waterloo: these are rendered here by MRB Shaw into an English translation that is stylishly fluent and precise.
I loved Stendhal's Scarlet and Black. Loved it. So I've been anticipating this book for quite some time. I was disappointed. I was so utterly uncaptivated by it that it took me a solid month to get through it, and it's not that long a book. I just didn't find it nearly as compelling as Scarlet and Black, and that has been such a disappointment. I think it was the combination of Fabrizio's lack of any real awareness of what's going on around him for much of the book, along with the relentless court dramas that just bored the crap out of me. I didn't care what heppened to him, and I really didn't care about all the court crap that was mostly just ridiculous little vanities of the sovereigns. If the story had started much later, and focused more on the love story between Fabrizio and Clelia, maybe it would have been a little better, but by the time that had started, I was already thoroughly bored with him, so even that didn't really suck me in too much. And the ending of it seemed almost like Stendhal ran out of steam or something, because it was all, "Three years later, this incident happened, and then everybody died." What the hell?
So basically, I was intensely disappointed with this book, and will now move on to something that comes highly recommended by several people I know, so hopefully that will be better.
clunky, unwieldy, silly protagonist, have trouble finishing it.
The Charterhouse of Parma chronicles the adventures of the young Italian nobleman Fabrice del Dongo from his birth in 1798 to his death. Fabrice spends his early years in his family’s castle on Lake Como, while most of the rest of the novel is set in a fictionalized Parma (both locations are in modern-day Italy).
Such a fantastic book. Classics are classics for a reason!