Cesar Birotteau (Penguin Classics)

Rating:
Summary: To be brutally frank...
Review: ...Cesar Birotteau is pretty damned boring. It has its moments, but really, Balzac is at his best when his wild, fantastical impulses are let loose, fascinatingly at odds with his view of himself as historian. This is a very restrained novel, with little or none of the former aspect of his character. And it just ain't that interesting. The painstaking attention to detail may be laudable, and the title character's rise and fall is entirely believable, but there's very little real drama. The previous reviewer compared du Tillet do Vautrin, which is patently ridiculous: du Tillet is an unpleasant character to be sure, but he never ascends the heights of terrible grandeur that Vautrin does, nor was Balzac trying to make him do so.

I can't give this less than three stars: it's well-written, and, as always, Balzac has a fine grasp of financial institutions. Unsurprisingly, that does not exactly make for the most riveting of reads, however. Ultimately, Cesar Birotteau is somewhat valuable for giving us early glimpses of characters like Crevel, Popinot, and Gaudissart, but it's definitely not for the uninitiated.

Rating:
Summary: To be brutally frank...
Review: ...Cesar Birotteau is pretty damned boring. It has its moments, but really, Balzac is at his best when his wild, fantastical impulses are let loose, fascinatingly at odds with his view of himself as historian. This is a very restrained novel, with little or none of the former aspect of his character. And it just ain't that interesting. The painstaking attention to detail may be laudable, and the title character's rise and fall is entirely believable, but there's very little real drama. The previous reviewer compared du Tillet do Vautrin, which is patently ridiculous: du Tillet is an unpleasant character to be sure, but he never ascends the heights of terrible grandeur that Vautrin does, nor was Balzac trying to make him do so.

I can't give this less than three stars: it's well-written, and, as always, Balzac has a fine grasp of financial institutions. Unsurprisingly, that does not exactly make for the most riveting of reads, however. Ultimately, Cesar Birotteau is somewhat valuable for giving us early glimpses of characters like Crevel, Popinot, and Gaudissart, but it's definitely not for the uninitiated.

Rating:
Summary: The tragic tale of a perfumer
Review: This is the fifth Balzac book I have read, and it is the fourth best of all of them. This may be a great compliment to Balzac's writing abilities since he seems to be able to dispense classic after classic.

This story, is a simple tale about the rise and fall of a perfumer. Cesar, the perfumer, lives in Paris and is having a fairly good life thanks to the invention of a hand cream. Unfortunately, since he is not a clever business man, Cesar falls into debt when he throws an elegant society ball. The rest of the book deals with his dowfall as Cesar deals with his wife and daughters sadness, a friend who ran off with 100000 francs, sleazy bankers, an angry nut dealer, architect and his future son in law.

Cesar Birroteau is a fairly tragic story which will have the ability to move the reader. Those who have read other Balzac works will recognize Gobseck the money letter and also the reference to the Nucignens from La Pere Goriot.

This is a great Balzac work with a notable ending. It is not as good as Eugenie Grandet, Ursule Mirouet or La Pere Goriot but is none the less excellent.

Some readers may find Balzac's attention to detail exhausting in several places. Especially in one or two chapters dealing with accounting, you may as well skip over them because they are virtually incomprehensible but also unnecessary.

Balzac's characters also seem similar if you have read other books. Cesar is similar to Goriot, Cesarine to Ursule Mirouet and Eugenie Grandet, the prodigy son in law (I forget his name) to Charles and Rastignac and finally the evil banker is similar to master criminal Vautrin.

Overall excellent. His charcters cry and fall to their knees a lot but that's no surprise if you've read other books of Balzac.