A review by deegee24
Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert

4.0

This is a bit of a letdown after Madame Bovary. Henry James called the book  "elaborately and massively dreary," and there are definitely parts in the middle, repetitive satirical portraits of the leisure class, that are a hard slog. Nevertheless, there are also passages of stunning prose (judging from the English translation) and penetrating insights on the social upheavals of France in the years before and after the revolution of 1848. The main character, Frédéric Moreau, is an interesting example of an ambitious but aimless bourgeois who proclaims his undying love for a married woman but at the same time turns his attention to several other, more available women.