Customer Reviews

The Black City

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you like Victor Hugo, Emile Zola, or Gustave Flaubert, you will love George Sand. Many people have heard her name but much of her work has never been translated into English, so she is largely unread in the United States. Do yourself a favor and buy this book. The story seems fairly simple on the surface, but it has layers of meaning and truth that will strike you. The love story is very real and beautifully crafted, and the book's hero and heroine would not be out of place in the twenty-first century. I enjoyed every page of this book. You will, too! It's a must-own!

This short, fast paced novel, artfully translated by Kover, is as much a social commentary on life during the Industrial Revolution as it is a story of true love. The plot is engaging, the characters are convincing, and the story culminates in an inspiring twist. A pleasure to read, The Black City will surely strike a familiar chord with every entrepreneur, aspiring business owner, or anyone who has ever yearned for something more in life. I highly recommend reading it!

This is one of the best translations I've ever read, and it is so nice to have another of George Sand's works available in English. The story is surprisingly modern, very readable, with really appealing, human, simple characters. If you've heard of Sand but never read anything of hers, start with this book!

It took me a few chapters to get into this book (possibly because I was reading it as I was falling asleep) However, once I was in the midst of it, I just sat down and finished it off. The characters are really appealing and interesting, and also very human. With a very few descriptive words I know these people that Sand has created, I can see them very clearly and imagine every detail that she doesn't give us.
It isn't a very long story, though it takes place over a couple of years, and the cast of characters is very small. Sept-Epees is our hero and Tonine the heroine, they are a very interesting and powerfully drawn pair. Sept-Epees at first has a burning ambition to prove there are better things in life for him and invests all of his time and money in a money-pit of a factory (What it produces we never find out, but it is ultimately not importatnt) This ambition drives him further and further away from what everyone else (including the reader) know as his real happiness, Tonine.

The complexity of the plot that Sand manages to created with relatively few characters or incidences is amazing and very tantalizing. I would reccomend this book to anyone who was looking for something along the lines of Dickens but with a little more sunshine.

What's your image of a nineteenth century novel? Paragraphs and paragraphs of description? Dozens of characters? Hundreds and hundreds of pages? In short, Dickens? The Black City is a very different kind of story.

The Black City is a hive of hardworking, proud artisans...not rich, but not degradingly poor either. We are given just enough description for a general idea of the town - it seems to be built in a canyon next to a waterfall that powers some of the local industries. We meet about half a dozen residents, focusing mainly on Sept-Epees and Tonine, a young man and woman who are in love...or are they? They aren't sure themselves. If you're used to nineteenth century English novels, you may be surprised that Tonine really is not at all sure that marriage is a good idea for her - she likes her independence.

The plot hurtles along (the book is less than 190 pages) from one unexpected crisis to another - Sept-Epees has a chance to propose to Tonine, but they fumble it between them! Sept-Epees saves Audebert from suicide! Sept-Epees buys a bankrupt factory! Sept-Epees realizes he knows less about management than he thought! (Okay, it's largely the story of Sept-Epees, but we do see what Tonine is doing and thinking at crucial moments.) And on we go - hold on tight, or you'll fall off this speeding train.

Really, I enjoyed The Black City a lot, up to the last couple of chapters. The ending managed to feel both satisfying and rushed - it would be a better story if it was fifty or a hundred pages longer. We needed to see and hear details about the transforming experiences that both Tonine and Sept-Epees went through in the last year or so of the time covered...if only Sand had put the effort into telling us how those events happened, instead of just announcing that they had happened, this would be a six-star book.

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I wanted to know how Tonine coped with inheriting Molino's wealth and putting it to good use. Given human nature as Sand shows it and as we see it ourselves, you could expect that Tonine would make some mistakes and have to learn from them and that some people would resent and distrust her. What mistakes did she make? Who helped her, and who was hostile? How did she recover from early goofs to set up a thriving model factory and win the respect of the entire Black City? Now, that would be a GREAT story. And I didn't get to read it, because Sand never wrote it.)

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As usual Sand creates a short story mixing her interest on working class and equity values. Inside the romantic time when she wrote it, concludes that you don't need to be rich to achieve happiness. I enjoy the way she remarks several human values like kindness, generosity and detachment of things. The book came new (despite it said "used") and in short time.

I really liked it. It's a good story that everyone can relate to in some way. This book made me want to read more by George Sand. It's the perfect book to curl up with on a rainy afternoon!