![]() ![]() I have read and enjoyed Julian Barnes in the past and I know he has a great sense of witty humor but with all the strange quirky facts about Flaubert that are stuffed into this book, I couldn’t help but wonder if we, the readers are the butt of his joke.Flaubert’s Parrot was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1984 and many people love this book, but for me this particular piece of metafiction just didn’t work. He has written crime fiction under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh. ![]() He has been shortlisted three times for the Man Booker Prize - Flauberts Parrot (1984), England, England (1998), and Arthur & George (2005), and won the prize for The Sense of an Ending (2011). I may have done this book a disservice as I haven’t read anything by Flaubert so many observations and quotes went over my head but overall I found Flaubert’s Parrot to be a bizarre and pointless alternative biography. Julian Patrick Barnes is a contemporary English writer of postmodernism in literature. Unfortunately the doctor is such a colorless character that I easily lost interest in him and found he faded into the pages. ![]() ![]() He seems determined to find the answer to obscure things such as which of two stuffed parrots was Flaubert’s actual inspiration for one of his stories or why Flaubert kept changing the color of Emma Bovary’s eyes. Geoffrey Braithwaite is a retired doctor and appears to on a quest to examine all things “Flaubert”. It is a combination of a literary critique of Gustave Flaubert as well as a novel that deals with the mystery of obsession and betrayal. Flaubert’s Parrot by Julian Barns was both a difficult and strange read for me. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |