Cousin Bette

"That famous putdown of Tosca, a "shabby little shocker", could have easily applied to this mess of a story. The best thing I can say about <I>Cousin Bette</I> is that if you keep reading long enough it ends. Eventually.<br/><br/>Where to begin: the casual racist and anti semitic slurs? Balzac's endless stock of insults for sex workers: hussies, *****, trollopes, devils, demons, monsters? (Poor Josepha, the Jewish courtesan gets her share of both.) His tiresome name dropping of famous artists, and of characters from his other books? The endless details of monetary transactions? (If Hortense inherits 30,ooo francs in capital of which half is invested in the funds at 5% , but her father has signed a bond for 3000 livres, where will she be? Do we we care?)<br/><br/>All of this would be tolerable if the characters were interesting, but they simply aren't. There's the scheming title character, Bette, whose schemes are never particularly clever or successful. There's her saintly cousin Adeline, the perfect wife, eternally (and unrealistically) devoted to Hulot, her horror show of a husband, even after he ruins the entire family fortune (including those of his children) on a series of mistresses. Much vitriol is spent on the mistresses, whereas good ol' Hulot pretty much gets off scot free. When Adeline is reduced to a fainting spell after discovering Hulot had betrayed her <I>yet again</I>, I pretty much lost interest. Honey, the dude is just not that into you. Cut your losses and run!<br/><br/>The only characters I found even moderately bearable were Joespha, and the scapegrace Crevel, father to Adeline's daughter-in-law, and Hulots' rival for several women. Yet while Hulot is pathetic, Crevel's cheeky humor and confidence as a self-made man make you root for him, despite his depravities. Josepha is similarly good natured, willing to take in an aging and decrepit former lover while thoughtfully suggesting that the government should fund classes for "good wives'' like Adeline so that they would be able to keep their husbands' interest. Everyone else is a caricature of either vice, virtue, or stupidity.<br/><br/>Balzac has described this as his best novel. Doesn't inspire me to read the rest.<br/><br/>NOTE: Saw the trailer for the Jessica Lange film version, which apparently tried to make this into a classic French bedroom farce(wrong). There 's a 1971 BBC miniseries starring Helen Mirren as Mme Marneffe, the nefarious mistress, which seems closer to the spirit of the book."

"Anything Balzac, of course :) but I finished “The midnight library” and it was a very good read for me. "