La cugina Bette

This book had good moments but I'm disappointed I didn't enjoy it more than I did. It's about a jealous old spinster paying her family back for decades of being treated as inferior for being the ugly cousin. She teams up with the beautiful Madame Marneffe (cue the homoerotic undertones) to destroy t Leggi tutto

Pro Tip: Honoré de Balzac isn't a name that someone with a Southern accent has an easy time with, and I walked around for a week telling everyone that I was reading a book by someone whose name was Ballsack. Honestly, I should have just listened to the book, shut up, and kept my redneck pronunciation Leggi tutto

Compelling (and unsavory) characters drew me into Honore de Balzac's Cousin Bette (1846). The main plot centers on Cousin Bette's revenge on her family; however, all the stories which make up the novel are imbued by obsessions which drive the narrative to its dark end. Much of how I described Balzac Leggi tutto

After a run of reading more modern books that have left me underwhelmed I thought it was time to remind myself of how great a novel can be. I had had this sitting on my shelf for a while but was feeling too tired to commit to 450 pages and the exertions of flipping back and forth to the notes explai Leggi tutto

I really enjoyed this, it felt loosely Ferrante style in the city element and the family intrigue x Dark, political and rich writing heavy xx

The blurb says that the nasty old spinster Cousin Bette goes on a mission to destroy her supercilious condescending family, so I though well, that sounds fun! It also says “Cousin Bette is a book in which Balzac is most characteristically and triumphantly himself”. That turned out to be not so much Leggi tutto