Flaubert's Parrot Paperback – November 27, 1990

this is one of the best books I've read last year. Full of surprises, this is literature as a means of communication and creation. Every chapter has some unexpected development which opens new philosophical questions. The chapter about the parrot is one of a kind, dealing with authenticity, pretensión, expectations. Barnes is a reliable writer, wherever I find his name I can tell I will have a good time

I had a hard time getting into this book. I have not read anything by Flaubert before and thought it might prove to be a hindrance, but found that it was not.Julian Barnes sets the stage very well, even while flitting around with the narration and once engaged, I enjoyed the novel and the quirky style more than anticipated. The novel stands on it's own quite well.The book centers around a retired physician haunted by scholarly questions and minutiae from the novels and real life of the author, Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880), especially in trying to determine which of two different parrots he visits once graced the author's desk?The scholarly obsession with Flaubert by the good Dr. Braithwaite doesn't make much sense until the last few chapters when betrayals of love and literature slowly surface.A favorite quote .... "Language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity."That poetry wraps around this novel so nicely.It's all about words! .....And words deceive much as people deceive.Why does Flaubert keep changing the color of M. Bovary's eyes? And why is Dr. Braithwaite so haunted by this revelation and other minor mysteries?We discover that Flaubert viewed his work much differently by literal definitions and feels his entire position to have been misunderstood..... "The artistic world has become irritatingly full of schools and -isms: Realism, Naturalism, Impressionism ("A bunch of jokers who have convinced themselves, and want to convince us, that they've discovered the Mediterranean!")"Ironically, he finds himself to be hailed as one of the founding fathers of Realism.... after having said that it was because he hated Realism so much that he wrote Madame Bovary in the first place! He also said that success, when it came, always struck for the wrong reason.This novel definitely has you guessing at many of the references and reasons for them. But it slowly reveals them in a wonderful prose that is keenly sharp and often quite funny.The attempts to find the real Flaubert cleverly mirror the attempts to find the real parrot he kept on his desk while writing and in the end....both prove seemingly futile.

This book is a confusing blend of styles and points of view, as required by meta-fiction outlines. However, just keep reading it to enjoy Julian Barnes wonderfully funny and skillful prose. If you do not analyze and try to make complete sense of the book, which is a daunting task, you can sit back, read and smile.

You have to have read Madame Bovary (or maybe Cliff's notes on Madame Bovary) to understand the plot. You don't have to have read "Un Coeur Simple" but you probably will after reading this. It's not until three-quarters of the way through that you suddenly realize there's a plot. Until then it's a series of very clever biographical essays about Flaubert. Then you understand why the narrator it obsessed with Flaubert. Then you get equally clever essays about the nature of love and grief. Wonderful insight into the poignancy of bereavement combined with sharp and erudite wit. It may be too erudite and clever for some. It demands a certain amount of francophilia and anglophilia, and understanding phrases like "I might let the TLS have it." I'd always thought it was Nabokov, not Starkie who accused Flaubert of getting mixed up about the color of Emma's eyes. I think he did get get mixed up about the color of Loulou's wings in Un Coeur Simple- at least in the English translation I read.

What a strange book. How does one even begin to categorize it? Maybe that's the point. Maybe it shouldn't be categorized at all. It is literary criticism, posing as literary biography and meditation on fiction. It is an amalgam of those things and others. But mostly it is a tour de force of writing.This was Julian Barnes' third novel, published in 1984. It won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and was short listed for the Booker, the first of several of his books to be so listed. It is a short novel, very experimental in concept and structure. Some would call it plotless. It is certainly nonlinear in its story-telling.Barnes gives us as his main character and narrator English doctor Geoffrey Braithwaite, who is obsessed with Madame Bovary's author, Gustave Flaubert. Braithwaite's conceit is that he will write a biography of Flaubert. and to that end, he pores over Flaubert's correspondence, his books, and other biographies of the man.He becomes consumed by the minute details he discovers. Why do Emma Bovary's eyes change color in different editions or sections of the book? Which parrot inspired A Simple Heart - the one Flaubert borrowed from Rouen Museum and kept on his desk during the writing of the story or another one from a hotel? Braithwaite spends much of his time investigating the parrot issue and trying to resolve it.He also explores Flaubert's intellectual and physical relationships with others and particularly how they relate to the creation of Emma Bovary. It gradually becomes clear that there are parallels in Braithwaite's own life, that he sees something of Emma in the life of his own wife, now dead.All of this is revealed slowly, in fragmentary fashion, through extraordinary word play and dissertations on the writer's role, the relationship between art and life, and the unproductive role of literary critics. While most novels are presented in a straightforward, linear fashion that allows the reader to easily digest the meal being served, this one reveals itself somewhat as a coconut. The reader has to work to get at the milk and meat inside.The plot, if it can truly be called that, is Flaubert's life of the mind and the body. As Braithwaite enthusiastically explores that life, we are privy to his research, his notes, musings, and speculations. And that makes up the main body of the book. When we learn, finally, that Braithwaite's own much-loved wife had been unfaithful to him in the manner of Emma Bovary, we begin to appreciate his obsession, his need to understand both the writer and his fictional creations.Flaubert's Parrot brilliantly marries the details of Flaubert's life, his creation of the world of Emma Bovary, and the life of the narrator, Geoffrey Brathwaite, who had his own experience of adultery and, ultimately, of bereavement.And what about that parrot? Where did Flaubert get it? How did he conceive of it? How did it inspire him to write? Does it matter? Probably not. Well, then, never mind.