Flaubert's Parrot | Julian Barnes

Flaubert's Parrot | Julian Barnes | An unexpected little masterpiece

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Flaubert's Parrot

	Flaubert's Parrot Julian Barnes Vintage, 1990 - 192 pages average customer review:based on 31 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Highbrow Fun

I use this in an AP course I teach, and the kids love it. We read Madame Bovary, "A Simple Heart," and then the Barnes. And this is how I recommend you read it too. (Knowing Sentimental Education probably helps too.) Barnes is right to choose Flaubert as his protagonist's obsession; other choices he (and Braithwaite) make are also felicitous. Best of all, when all the virtuoso pyrotechnics are finished, what remains is a profoundly moving human story. In many ways, this novel redeems so many of the empty puzzles passing themselves off as postmodern fiction these days. For me, Barnes belongs in the company of Pynchon and Gass.

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An unexpected little masterpiece

This is one of my favorite novels of the past twenty-five years. It is also one that will delight you even before you realize what is really going on in it.

The novel starts off more as a quirky biography of the novelist Gustave Flaubert. The narrator appears as a scholar concerned to find the original parrot that Flaubert used in writing his masterpiece "A Simple Heart," a story in which a peasant woman believes that the Holy Spirit should be imagined not as a dove but as a parrot, since parrots possess the gift of speech. The story ends as beautifully as any ever written, with the woman on her death bed sensing the presence of the God in the form of a giant parrot hovering over her.

As I indicated, much of the novel functions as a wonderful introduction to Flaubert, both his wonderfully quirky life and his equally inventive literature. In fact, for my friends who have read or are reading MADAME BOVARY, I always recommend this to them in the strongest possible terms. More than any other book I know in English, this will make you want to read Flaubert if you haven't already and if you have it will make you want to read him again. The specific task the narrator has set himself, however, is to find which of the stuffed parrots in the museum near where Flaubert lived was the actual one that Flaubert borrowed while writing his short story. The novel becomes a bit of a mystery novel as he attempts to deal with the contradictory claims made for various birds and the many assurances amid so much confusion.

But in the end this isn't what the novel is really about. I don't want to spoil the novel's great twist by explaining what it really is about, but I will say that it is similar to the twist near the end of D. M. Thomas's wonderful THE WHITE HOTEL: what you think the novel is about turns out to be something else instead.

I cannot recommend this novel strongly enough. It is a brilliantly conceived book and entertaining on several levels. And on top of everything else you'll get a nice introduction to Flaubert, if not his parrot.

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a sublime quirky book

It's interesting there've been only 3 reviews on this book. Does this mean people aren't reading the book? And what about the three reviews...they're all glowing. What does this mean? I don't think I would have liked it were I a woman. Not that the book's at all misogynist. Rather, its sensibilities are male, so perhaps the book appeals to men. In all, the book is a masterpiece of thought and expression, heavy with ideas and twists of mind genially served up. It's moved me to order a Flaubert novel and now I'll do a little sleuthing of my own!

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Unusually memorable and among my top 10 favorites

Although I read this book years ago, it still comes to mind when I am asked about the best books I have read. It is especially interesting and touching. Best read while in Paris.

If you like anything, read this book

Read this book. Read this book. Read this book. But first, read Pale Fire, by Vladimir Nabokov. That done, read this book.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, page 6, 7

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