A review by jbstaniforth
Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert

2.0

Meandering and tedious. For a book with "education" in its title, the truly unlike able protagonist changes remarkably little over its course, and few of the other characters do either, leaving me annoyed by the reappearance of each one. They're as hard to believe as they are to like--it feels like Flaubert used them as dummies to set up and knock down in the place of whoever it was from his youth for which he held grudges. Compared with Madame Bovary, which I remember devouring when I read it twelve years ago, this book offered characters that to me seem med neither very real nor very interesting. Henry James's dismissal that it was like "masticating ashes and sawdust" captures my reading experience: there was little flavour or intellectual nourishment for me here. Though I could see a clear example of the excesses in realism against which modernists were reacting. Too often the excess of writing, which I presume Flaubert felt brought him closer to capturing the reality of the situation described, alienated me from the scene's emotional core and essence. There are a lot of long lists in this novel and few of them succeed in bringing to mind resonant images or lasting emotions. Given how much I enjoyed Bovary, I'm a little shocked, but a lot of factors enter into one's enjoyment of a novel. Perhaps twelve years from now I'll return to this and read it with different eyes, but for the moment it felt largely like a waste of time that I hoped would go someplace further than it did.