A review by cameliarose
Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes

3.0

Flaubert's Parrot is a strange book. I pick it up because I like the author, not because I am interested in Flaubert. The book looks like a biography, but the narrator is not Julian Barnes himself, instead, it is a fictional amateur Gustave Flaubert expert Geoffrey Braithwaite. Barnes got me fooled until the chapter about the lost-and-found-then-burned letters between Flaubert and an English governess. After that, the book becomes interesting.

My favorite chapter is Chapter 7, where Louise Colet, a poet and Flaubert’s lover, spoke. A modern interpretation of the poet’s inner world.