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mattyswytla 's review for:
The Charterhouse of Parma
by Stendhal
What can I say about the novel?
It started with an amazing sarcastic streak and a fop of a main hero, which made for hilarious reading, then it suddenly began to meander and focus on more and more secondary characters, turning it exceedingly dull by every new chapter. No wonder it took me over a month to finish it, since I began to avoid further disappointment. Ah well, what a reader does for a reading challenge - I'll learn one of these days.
The elevated prose and overly emotional dialogue did me in real quick once the author lost the overview of his novel - padded dialogue, or bombastic emotions are so not my cup of tea. The feeling is made even worse because I could see a good novel lurking underneath the many problems with pacing and focus. I was really annoyed with the sudden turn towards melodrama and opera-level overblown romance. It makes zero sense when you consider the tone of the early chapters. The novel also had no central message or main poitn I could see, but maybe dissing on the Italians is the point here?
You can easily skip this novel; apparently, Red and Black is far superior. I'm going to tackle that one when I recover from this book.
It started with an amazing sarcastic streak and a fop of a main hero, which made for hilarious reading, then it suddenly began to meander and focus on more and more secondary characters, turning it exceedingly dull by every new chapter. No wonder it took me over a month to finish it, since I began to avoid further disappointment. Ah well, what a reader does for a reading challenge - I'll learn one of these days.
The elevated prose and overly emotional dialogue did me in real quick once the author lost the overview of his novel - padded dialogue, or bombastic emotions are so not my cup of tea. The feeling is made even worse because I could see a good novel lurking underneath the many problems with pacing and focus. I was really annoyed with the sudden turn towards melodrama and opera-level overblown romance. It makes zero sense when you consider the tone of the early chapters. The novel also had no central message or main poitn I could see, but maybe dissing on the Italians is the point here?
You can easily skip this novel; apparently, Red and Black is far superior. I'm going to tackle that one when I recover from this book.