The Lily in the Valley

That is this book: a huge joke. Of course I won't reveal the ending, but it's definitely that. The other two reviewers on this page have noted that Balzac regarded this novel, certainly not his best, as one of his favourites, and I think that is due to the fact that throughout it he is playing with the characters and with the reader. One of the reviewers also noted the similarity with subjects treated by Stendhal and Falubert, and indeed it would be good if someone (I may do it one day) wrote an essay comparing this novel to Stendhal's "Red and Black" and Flaubert's "The Sentimental Education". This is what literary critics call a "bildungsroman", a novel of apprenticeship -or lack of it. Apparently a Romantic novel, it can also be read from the other side of the street, as an Anti-Romantic novel. The experienced reader of Balzac is surprised that here he turns out so much corniness and cheap sentimentality, until he/she finds out why at the end. Felix de Vandenesse is the youngest child of a noble family of Touraine, in beautiful Western Central France, whose luck has been bad under the Revolution and the Napoleonic Age. Nobody loves poor Felix, especially his horrible mother, who sends him to live first with a breast-feeder and then to cruel boarding schools where he suffers from loneliness and poverty. During his return home, he attends a party where he instantly falls in love with a married woman, older than him. In fact, he falls so in love that he kisses her shoulder, to the astonishment and rejection of the surprised lady. Felix then falls into depression and his mother sends him to the countryside with some rich friends. And... surprise surprise, the neighbor of the friends is none other than the lady and her husband and two permanently sick kids. Felix befriends the Mortsauf family and starts a strange, indeed sick, romance with his beloved, Henriette, Madame de Mortsauf. It's a platonic, repressed and tormented love affair. The four memebers of the Mortsauf family are among the strangest and most complex in all of literature, especially the Count and Henriette. The former is an asylum lunatic suffering from bipolar depressive disease, big time. He is hypochondriac, coleric, verbally violent, blackmailer and unsympathetic, and he makes life hell to his wife and kids. Henriette is also an emotional blackmailer, a religious fanatic, martyr by vocation, overprotecting mother and a lover with the Wendy complex: she feels herself to be the mother Felix never really had. The kids are two morbid creatures with a foot in the tomb, who appear and disappear like the children in Henry James's "Turn of the Screw". The novel is written in the form of a long letter Felix writes to his current lover many years after the events. After some months by Henriette's side, young -and virgin- Felix leaves for Paris, where he will enjoy contacts in high places, provided by Henriette's parents. When he leaves, Felix carries a wonderful letter written by Hen

Of all of Balzac's 93 odd novels this one was his personal favorite. This is the sixth book of his I've read and I think it's probably one of the worst. That's not saying it's bad, it just doesn't compare to the brilliance of Eugenie Grandet, Ursule Mirouet, Pere Goriot or Cesar Birroteau.The plot centers around Felix, a young man who has had a difficult time growing up. One night at a prestigious ball he falls in love with Madame de Morstauf or Henriette. He then goes up to her house in Toraine in a beautiful valley and spends great lengths of time with her.Her husband is a tyrannical type of guy, prone to violent fits but Henriette is determined to stick with the marriage. Felix and her develop an odd kind of relationship, almost like brother and sister. Felix then falls in love with an Englishwoman realizing he has no chance with Henriette. Henriette dies of jealousy.That is a very sketchy plot outline.The book is too long and a bit boring for Balzac. His lead male charcters are always variations on the same thing and he spends far too much time dealing with atmosphere and surroundings.As usual Balzac uses words like "ardent", "ardour" and several others far too much and in each of his novels I've noticed that all of his characters mention at one point that they are willing to sacrifice themselves for their lovers. Of course they never do.There are many wonderful parts to this book, especially a cutting letter describing the differences between French and English women.A very good book, but for Balzac, my favorite, this is one of the weaker ones.