I used to have a copy of this in a very dull cover in my library, which I kept meaning to read, and finally took to the charity bookshop unread. But thanks to the attraction of a good cover, and my good experience of OXFORD WORLD'S CLASSICS, and my affection for Flaubert, I re-bought it in this edition, and although still in the middle of it, am enjoying a long, slow, appreciative read.
This book satisfactorily fills in the period between Stendhal and Chateaubriand and the later worlds of Huysmans and Maupassant, differing greatly from Balzac. Although published in 1869, it is set in the 1840s. It is written in a curiously deliberate naive, almost awkward style which gives it the feeling of not being written by a real writer at all, but by the young man whose indecisive story it tells. This style makes it easy to read, and brings the reader nearer to the concerns it describes.