A Sentimental Education
Often called the most modern of nineteenth-century novels — Flaubert's diagnosis of the bourgeois generation that betrayed the 1848 Revolution and slid into the cushy nullity of the Second Empire.
“Yes, perhaps. That was the best time we ever had.”
Why It Matters
Often called the most modern of nineteenth-century novels — Flaubert's diagnosis of the bourgeois generation that betrayed the 1848 Revolution and slid into the cushy nullity of the Second Empire. Henry James called it 'the strangest of novels'; later modernists from Joyce to Sebald regarded it as a foundational text. Its anti-plot and its disillusioned irony made the modern European novel possible.
The 
Take
Personal reviewI guess there’s some great descriptions and the realism is good, but it’s just too all over the place and nothing built to anything. The plot was so chaotic and so much overlay of French politics and stuff, it just seemed like a big scrambled mess. Preferred bovary, but still just don’t appreciate Flaubert like Hugo , Stendhal and dumas
Notable Quotes
“He travelled. He came to know the melancholy of steamships, cold awakenings under canvas, the tedium of landscapes and ruins, the bitterness of broken friendships.”
“She had wanted to make sure that he had not forgotten her.”