A review by akhuseby
Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert

2.0

This book is not at all about what it claims to be about (or what it's purported to be about). I was expecting a sort of Wuthering Heights love story between Frederic Moreau and Madame Arnoux. But really, this is a story of the French Revolution, in which women are commodities of the aristocratic world in which Frederic Moreau operates. He doesn't really love any of the four women with whom he is involved. The scenes between Frederic and Madame Arnoux are melodramatic and disingenuous, just like the scenes between Frederic and his other mistresses. Here's a good quote that sums up how women are regarded in this text: "Women's hearts were like those desks full of secret drawers that fit one inside another; you struggle with them, you break your fingernails, and at the bottom you find a withered flower, a little dust, or nothing at all!" Um, yeah, right. OK?

The treatment of women aside, this is just not a well-written book. The characters are ambiguous, the descriptions overly long and only occasionally transportive, and the narrative jumps temporally in the space of a sentence with no notice or warning. The reader is left to infer that much time has passed. So, not a favorite. I've read it, and I won't be going back for more. A disappointment from Flaubert.