743. Flaubert's Parrot

Flaubert's Parrot
Julian Barnes
1984
Around 190 pages

Thank you, Julian Barnes. We were floundering there for a minute. I adore novels that focus on our authors of List past, especially when the subject is one of my personal favorites as well.

Geoffrey Braithwaite is a widowed English doctor and Flaubert expert. Rather than following a traditional narrative, each chapter explores some aspect of Flaubert's life and how it ties into Geoffrey's experience. My favorite chapters focused on the criticism Flaubert receives for his writing, and how Geoffrey rebuts each point. It's inspirational to me as a writer, since even Flaubert has his haters.

Julian Barnes really weaves Geoffrey's story into this examination well, and takes on parasocial relationships. Ahem. I might have a few of those. And it is thematically brilliant to focus on the parrot as a centerpiece. While visiting sites related to Flaubert, Geoffrey discovers two museums claiming to display the stuffed parrot which sat on Flaubert's writing desk while he wrote Un Coeur Simple. While trying to identify which is authentic, Braithwaite learns that his parrot could be any one of fifty that had been held in the collection of the municipal museum.

I love unpacking how we put artists on pedestals, but relentlessly criticize their work as well. And then we get weirdly obsessed with the objects they've left behind, as though seeing their desks will help us get closer to them. I am, of course, putting myself in this category as well, as a writer of this blog and frequent visitor of writers' museums. 

Julian Barnes is one of my favorite writers, and thankfully this is not the last we will see of him.

RATING: *****

Interesting Facts:

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1984. 

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