A display of great technical audacity and elegant virtuosity, at the service of a very entertaining plot in which fiction alternates with real events very imaginatively arranged. A book that has had extraordinary success, both critically and in sales, and has received numerous awards.
This novel is not only about the parrot that appeared in Un coeur simple, but also about railways and bears; of France and England; of life and art; of sex and death; by George Sand and Louise Colet; of the (hated) scholars of Flaubert's work and the virtues of the "amateur" reader. And all this from the pen of an enigmatic narrator, Dr. Braithwaite, passionate about Flaubert, whose life and secrets are progressively revealed to us.
«Delicious and enriching: A book to go on a party with!» (Joseph Heller).
«A gem: a literary novel that is not ashamed of being one and not ashamed of be...read more
