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3.69 AVERAGE
3.69 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
medium-paced
if duroy lived in 2024 he would listen to the smiths and tell girls he reads feminist literature
I thought Guy de Maupassant's novel "Bel-Ami" was OK, but it didn't live up to my expectations. Mostly because I kept waiting for the main character's comeuppance, which never actually came. Not only does the bad guy win here, but other men seem to celebrate his behaviors, while Maupassant's women are too dumb to see through anything.
Georges Duroy is a social climber and Lothario, who is irresistible to every woman who happens to cross his path. The more he gets (in terms of money, women and prestige,) the more he desires.
It is hard to enjoy a novel where the main character gets everything they ever want -- through rather devious means -- and is celebrated for that, too.
Georges Duroy is a social climber and Lothario, who is irresistible to every woman who happens to cross his path. The more he gets (in terms of money, women and prestige,) the more he desires.
It is hard to enjoy a novel where the main character gets everything they ever want -- through rather devious means -- and is celebrated for that, too.
Is there more of a cad in literature than George Duroy. Yes, there probably is, but Maupassant has created a thoroughly unlikeable character in the social climbing Duroy. Bel Ami is a highly entertaining story describing his antics as he climbs the social and economic ladders of Paris in the 1880s. Reminiscent in some ways of a Henry James novel, this story has a much different approach and ending.
medium-paced
The tale of an unexceptional - but extremely amoral - chap who rises to the top of vacuous Parisian society on the back of a succession of affairs with ladies of increasingly higher stature. A telling critique of the early days of the French Third Republic, it stands up rather well to time.
LOVED seeing this bastard win. Flaubertian in the most fun, hottest way.
sad
medium-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
In my 20 Books of Summer list post, I described Bel-Ami thus: “Pretty sure this is a novel about a fin de siècle gigolo? I’m in.” And it’s not, quite, but that phrasing does get to the heart of something about the book’s protagonist. Georges Duroy (“Bel-Ami” is a nickname given to him by the daughter of one of his mistresses) starts out every inch the poor provincial in the capital, ekeing out money to tide him over til his next payday as a clerk, unable to afford both a beer and dinner on a Friday. His rise through the intertwined worlds of journalism and national politics is facilitated through manipulation and sex: his first wife, Madeleine, is the widow of a fellow journalist and it’s largely through her social circle (and her superior writing ability) that Duroy gets the scoops he needs to promote himself. His mistresses, Mme de Marelle and Mme Walter, off-set each other; Mme de Marelle, whose husband is pleasant and apparently indifferent to her extramarital activity, is the one he truly cares for, but Mme Walter is his boss’s wife, so despite quickly tiring of her, he has to tread carefully. But all of this scheming and heartbreaking has terrible consequences for Duroy’s humanity—he legally steals half a million francs from Madeleine’s inheritance, beats Mme de Marelle to the ground in a horrifying scene of temper, and it’s the Walter’s youngest daughter Suzanne who ends up as his second wife, in a glorious society wedding which Mme Walter is forced, almost hysterical with jealousy and grief, to attend. The physical detail of Belle Époque Paris is so present, the prose is so easy to read (thanks in part to an excellent translation), and the protagonist’s almost imperceptible transformation from a callow youth into a monster of money and greed is reminiscent of the best Trollope novels. In fact, I’d strongly recommend this to anyone who enjoyed the Palliser novels and is now at a loss—it’s also a lot shorter.