To paraphrase Mark Twain, even slightly, I might say that a classic is a book which people praise and don’t read.
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It’s most likely true in many cases, though luckily not in all.
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Nevertheless I prefer to say that a classic is a book which has never finished saying what it has to say.
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For this reason let me start with “Madame Bovary” by Gustave Flaubert, because it should be read before the book I’m going to review today, a book with the title “Flaubert’s Parrot”.
The two books are linked to each other, because the classic novel “Madame Bovary” is the basis on which we might approach “Flaubert’s Parrot”, which is a novel on two different tracks, the literary essay and the fictional plot, which although not parallel, are deeply interconnected.

“All you always wanted to know but never dared ask” – if you allow me to use this expression - about Flaubert and the genesis of his most famous novels is in this fascinating, ironical, thought provoking little book written by Julian Barnes in 1984.

The book is already long enough published that it might be nearly considered a classic of its kind, especially compared with the different dimensions of time we have nowadays when everything becomes almost obsolete in a few days.

In spite of that I recommend it warmly to all people who have a sure taste for good literature and who appreciate a meaningful, and sometimes painful self-irony and the apparent low profile of a sober, but elegant prose which is deeply thought-provoking.
Add to that the very accurate literary, historical and psychological analysis of the biographic elements of Gustave Flaubert’s life, which can help all of us to a better understanding of his books and perhaps to motivate us to read them .

I reassure you, Barnes' work is neither a pedantic, nor a boring book. On the contrary “Flaubert’s Parrot” is fluent and entertaining, often funny.

“Flaubert’s Parrot” is a well researched exposition of details about the great French writer, narrated in the voice of the protagonist of the book, an English retired doctor, Geoffrey Braithwaite, an amateur scholar passionate about Flaubert, who shares with us the fruit of his research, his introspection, his discoveries during a stay in Normandy, on the track of Gustave Flaubert.

Little by little, Dr. Braithwaite reveals to us something of his own life, as certain events are revealed by a parallel with Flaubert’s book and biography.

We discover that Braithwaite's wife, whom he loved deeply, was unfaithful to him and then committed suicide, without any apparent reason and he’s tormented by the thought that he had never known her in the depth of her mind, while he probably knows more intimately the mind of a French writer who died many years before his birth.

The comparison with Emma Bovary is apparently flagrant but, at the same time, we see clearly the differences.

The lines of the stories get mixed up with one other, and the protagonist, Dr. Braithwaite, tend to rationalize everything, his wife’s death included, but at the same time he tries to analyse the complicated and eternal processes of human nature.
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And what of the parrot in all that?
The parrot has a role of deus ex machina in a certain way and indeed could be said to be bearer of a metaphorical meaning.
It is true in fact that Flaubert borrowed a stuffed parrot from a museum of natural history and kept it on his desk for a few months when he was writing one of his tales “A Simple Heart” in which a parrot has an important role.

The protagonist of the Barnes’ book tries to find the parrot which inspired Flaubert and actually finds two parrots, kept in two different museums, both of which claimed to be the real “Flaubert’s parrot”.
During his attempt to define the historical reality and to identify the real parrot, the stuffed parrots multiply and thus create an indefinite and uncertain situation, like a labyrinth of mirrors where reality is reflected from many angles, losing all its precise features which would have been supposed to prevent us from getting lost.
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A final note, coming back to the point where I started.

“ Madame Bovary”

In case you knew the plot only from a movie, forget it.
I don’t believe too much in novel transformed in movies, they are nearly always disappointing and when they are not, they have nothing to do with the original novel in all cases.

Don’t get discouraged just thinking to read a book written more than 160 years ago.

Human nature has common features which change very slowly or which indeed may never change, and what is important in a novel is not only the plot, but the way it’s written.
What distinguishes the time of the publication of “Madame Bovary “ from the times we now live in is the way the novel was attacked for obscenity by public prosecutors, while nowadays nobody would consider it obscene in any way.

So if you didn’t do it yet, when you have a little time, consider reading “Madame Bovary”, which is not a precursor of modern soap operas, since Flaubert intended to criticize romanticism in writing it.
Maybe Flaubert’s parrot will flit over your head as an inspiration, as a wink...
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My colleague and co-owner of this virtual Book Club – Grinning Cat 1 - has wisely written her review of this very book, please read it too;
you can find it deposited in her part of the Club, clicking on the below little librarian black cat .