I promise--no more Balzac for a while. But I couldn't resist...

Père Goriot by Honoré de Balzac

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I have to say I'm in love with Balzac. Pere Goriot is the story of an old man and his love for his two daughters, who have married extremely well, and yet still demand more and more of him, and his relationship with a young law student, Eugene Rastignac. Like "Lost Illusions," another of Balzac's entries in his wide-reaching Human Comedy, Rastignac has a lot to learn about Paris. Rastignac finds his morality severely compromised as he comes into contact with Paris society and with the villain Vautrin (who made such a mess of Lucien in "Lost Illusions), who tells him exactly what he must do to succeed in Paris. That advice, and Rastignac's struggle with it, contrasted with the example of pure love shown by Goriot (which verges on idolatry) for his daughters, is the crux of this novel. Again, Balzac does such a superlative job of character development that it is impossible to turn away, and Paris is once again a fascinating character in itself. I'd love to read more of La Comedie Humaine--I'd love to read it all, but it may take me the rest of my life to do that. This was great.

Now I am going to take a rest from Balzac for a bit--though actually I'm pretty hooked on him, and I may not succeed. My plan was to not read this one right away, and I started something else, getting only two pages in before I realized I just really wanted to read more Balzac, so we'll see how this goes. I'm sort of dying to see Rastignac again and find out what happens to him.



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