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how the topic overshades art!! This book is a typical 19th century novel where the author writes how the cruelty of the system, the establishment and men in general, destroys the lifes of the idolized women. This book should have containd enought pathos to fill Balzac`s chest, but i`m afraid it did not, so I will restrain myself and others from reading further novels of such overdramatic, oversimplistic writing. Pardon me!
One of the best books ever I have read Eguenie Grandet and ever since then i have developed an unsatiable omnivorous Balzac appetite. Few years have passed since i read 'La Pierre gouriot' (which i found quite boring at the time. when i was 15). and today i find balzac to be one of the most heart-rending authors i have ever read. The true compassion one feels for his herorines is unchallenged - thanks god Balzac wrote 97 finished novels. Also, the descriptions in this book are no doubt of the best descriptions ever written, filled with warmth and poetry. Balzac gives us realism but his realism is filled with warmth, the compassion the characters sometimes lack is being compensated by the readers compassion. To read Eugenie Grandet is to know what compassion is!
A father chains his family to his futures. This book is a short and tragic read. Balzac's world of French culture, community and economy is so far removed from our modern experience of North American convenience, splurge spending and impulse that readers trying to make a jump from more contemporary "entertainment" novels to the classics may find an account of emotional hubris in a techno-free world like Eugenie's the equivalent to being stranded in their apartment with their cable on the fritz and stop before the story even begins. If the reader presses on they will discover a world where the focus of life is the opposite of the one we are all familiar with today. Eugenie's father is a man who sacrifices his family's more temporal needs of expression, education, and society in favor of tending to a growing fortune intended to be left to Eugenie, who's paternally imposed life of nearly puritan existence will certainly leave her unable to enjoy the fruits of her family's hard work and planning on any other level than the one her father has dictated for himself. No matter what state of convenience or inconvenience you may happen to live in today, it is impossible to read the sad story of this lonely, unknowingly wealthy girl, and not consider yourself pampered and intellectually lazy. Comparing Eugenie's state of spartan existence to my own access to the over-abundance of goods around me (in my surrounding neighborhood alone), I found a new awareness of my need to consume and the desire to strip my own need to succeed down to a need to enjoy.
A father chains his family to his futures. This book is a short and tragic read. Balzac's world of French culture, community and economy is so far removed from our modern experience of North American convenience, splurge spending and impulse that readers trying to make a jump from more contemporary "entertainment" novels to the classics may find an account of emotional hubris in a techno-free world like Eugenie's the equivalent to being stranded in their apartment with their cable on the fritz and stop before the story even begins. If the reader presses on they will discover a world where the focus of life is the opposite of the one we are all familiar with today. Eugenie's father is a man who sacrifices his family's more temporal needs of expression, education, and society in favor of tending to a growing fortune intended to be left to Eugenie, who's paternally imposed life of nearly puritan existence will certainly leave her unable to enjoy the fruits of her family's hard work and planning on any other level than the one her father has dictated for himself. No matter what state of convenience or inconvenience you may happen to live in today, it is impossible to read the sad story of this lonely, unknowingly wealthy girl, and not consider yourself pampered and intellectually lazy. Comparing Eugenie's state of spartan existence to my own access to the over-abundance of goods around me (in my surrounding neighborhood alone), I found a new awareness of my need to consume and the desire to strip my own need to succeed down to a need to enjoy.
The Best Book Ever Written This is without a doubt one of my absolute favorites. I read La Pere Goriot before I read this one thinking it was great. After reading this I was convinced that Balzac was easily one of the best authors ever.
The story focuses around the members of the Grandet family. The Father is a miser the likes of which you have never seen, a cruel man willing to ruin his family in his pursuit of money and gold. He owns a wine field in the small town and within the first fifty pages he is already ripping the town off. Mme. Grandet is the poor wife who has become used to her husband's pettiness but seems unfulfilled. Eugenie, the daughter is a young girl who has lived a sheltered and restrained life in the enormous house, never realising what the outside world has to offer.
The story is really quite simple. Charles, Mr Grandet's nephew comes to visit the family (his father has killed himself but he doesn't know that until Mr. Grandet shows him the suicide letter.) Eugenie falls in love, the Parisienne fop and the two have a quick love affair, Charles goes away a and promises to return one day so that they may marry, and a lot more which I'm not so silly as to ruin for you.
The story is an extremely sad affair. Eugenie is so wonderfully written that you begin to feel sorry for her position and that she has never really seen true happiness. Overall, a touching book, well worth the read. Much better than many of the other classics out there, believe me.
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