Julian Meynell's Books

This is the second novel that I have read by Balzac. I appreciate Balzac as a necessary precursor of some of my favorite novelists, particularly Zola. Balzac is very much a proto-Zola, but I have to say that I do not love him in the same way.

The novel is like King Lear in that it is all about the perils of giving all your money away to ungrateful daughters. The novel however revolves around the young student Rasternac and we see events of the novel through him.

There is nothing at all wrong with the novel and it is an important piece of innovation> Balzac is very much the person that set the tone for series French novels of the 19th century. He's good, but he is not as good as the people that came after him.

The book is worth reading, but it is not really a masterpiece.