Customer Reviews

Pere Goriot (Signet Classics)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
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The story is marvelous, but what I'm most impressed with is the quality of the translation. This is an elegant, witty, and very readable translation which adds much to the appreciation of Balzac. The translator, Henry Reed, was a well regarded poet in the UK. His only other Balzac translation is of Eugenie Grandet, out of print, but worth looking for.

I had four days to read this for a class, so I budgeted my time and decided to read around 70 pages a day. But this book was so enjoyable that I couldn't put it down, and I ended up reading 90 pages on the first day and the remaining 190 on the second. This is an engrossing story of devotion, betrayal, ambition, humility, crime, and innocence, told at a pleasantly brisk pace and peppered with profound observations on human nature. Goriot, Rastignac, and Vautrin are amazing characters, right up there with the creations of Dickens and Shakespeare.

As for the translation, I don't know French and therefore can't judge Henry Reed's faithfulness to Balzac's expression. But as English, Reed's prose is flawless.

Getting involved in the works of Balzac is like entering a magnificently equipped library with an insatiable appetite for books. His output was prodigious: novels, short stories, and essays, but it is primarily the HUMAN COMEDY for which he is best known. The complexity that is that book had its origins much earlier in his novel FATHER GORIOT (PERE GORIOT). Balzac liked to move characters back and forth from book to book like chess pieces. In much of his fiction, he places his characters in cities like Paris that are center of dissolution and corruption that test their moral mettle. Most often they fail, but it is in their failures that give his work their distinctive flavor.

Father Goriot is an old, sick pensioner who has raised his two daughters improperly such that they now return his earlier parental errors with daughterly ingratitude that elevates him to the status of a wounded Lear. He lives in a boarding house on the third floor, the cheapest floor. He had once been able to avoid the more expensive lower, but as he has given far too much of his dwindling resources to his greedy daughters, he is now facing poverty. This boarding house is a bustling center of activity, with Goriot only one part. A young and money hungry lawyer Eugene de Rastignac lives there too. He is handsome, witty, and definitely willing to bend a few rules to advance in the cesspool that is Parisian society. Eugene becomes the lover to one of Goriot's wealthy daughters, hoping that she can open doors to him that might otherwise have been closed. This daughter Delphine is only slightly less mercenary than her sister Anastasie, with whom Delphine is not on speaking terms. A friend of Eugene, Vautrin, who is aware of Eugene's poverty, offers to kill the brother of a woman that Eugene is dating, thus ensuring that in the event of a marriage, Eugene will marry into money. The primary focus of the story is on the disintegrating relation between Goriot and his daughters. They take his money until there is no more. For his part, Goriot remains inexplicably oblivious to their machinations. When he dies, both daughters find reasons not to attend the funeral which only Eugene attends. FATHER GORIOT is a novel of pessimism. It is not an unpleasant read, just an unpleasant topic, yet in Balzac's dramatic portrayal of the origins and consequences of greed and betrayal, it shows the depths to which people may plunge, while an uncaring city does little more than sit back and not take notice.

In these brilliantly written studies of the `human heart', Honoré de Balzac proves to be a master of suspense, creating mysteries and revealing the hidden histories, goals, truths, motives, emotions, desires and strategies behind the differently marked faces in this novel which represent all segments of the `human comedy'.
Through his mouthpiece, Vautrin, he shouts loudly his view on human society and the bold strategies needed to survive in `an ocean of mud'.

Characters, not types
Balzac doesn't work with `types' (G. Lukács) but with `characters': Père Goriot's loving daughters become harpies in the hands of their husbands, who squeeze the juicy orange and throw away the peel in the gutter.

Mankind and society
The author's mouthpiece, the criminal Vautrin, describes `the world as it is: laws and morality powerless against wealth, and success the ultimo ratio mundi. Wealth can buy everything. At the bottom of every great fortune without apparent source, there's always some crime - a crime overlooked because it's been carried out respectably.' `How corrupt are women here, and how despicably vain the men.'

Strategies
At the bottom, there are only two strategies to survive: stupid obedience or revolt.
`The poor drones which do the hard work without getting the slightest reward for their labors, the ones I call the Brotherhood of God's Down-at-Heels. To be sure that's virtue at the height of its stupidity.'
The right strategies are: `the more coldly you calculate, the further you'll go. Strike without pity; and you'll be feared. Look at men and women simply as post-horses, and leave them behind as soon as they're exhausted. And if you have any feeling, hide it like treasure.'

In this superbly built novel, Balzac combines formidably cunning writing strategies to keep the reader on the edge of his seat, while at the same time painting extraordinary vivid and highly emotional scenes of the human `comedy'.
This novel is a must read for all lovers of world literature.

When I began reading "Père Goriot", I wasn't sure I would like it, because for the first dozen pages or so, Balzac let the narrative voice run riot. Granted, the narrative voice has its place in terms of creating for the reader setting, mood, and characters. But once those elements have been established, I prefer that the narrator step aside and let the main characters have their say.

Thankfully, Balzac spared me further agonies upon introducing the young Rastignac (a rube and law student from Southern France keen to make his mark in genteel Parisian society), the wily and mysterious Vautrin, Goriot himself, and a few of the other characters in Madame's Vauquer's boarding house. They, together with their friends, lovers, and rivals, made this novel well worth reading.

Simply put, "Père Goriot" succeeds as a morality play on French society in the immediate post-Napoleonic era

This book floored me. I mean, jaw on the floor, gaping as I read, type of floored me. Who knew Balzac could be so approachable? I picked up this book fully expecting to struggle through it, much like my earlier trials with Middlemarch, and instead I found myself thoroughly intrigued by this drama. And Balzac himself, as narrator of the story of Father Goriot, calls it a drama, although he hastens to explain that it isn't quite the same as those other dramas of the time.

The word drama has been somewhat discredited of late; it has been overworked and twisted to strange uses in these days of dolorous literature; but it must do service again here, not because this story is dramatic in the restricted sense of the word, but because some tears may perhaps be shed intra et extra muros before it is over. - Father Goriot by Balzac

The story is focused around two characters - Father Goriot and a young, law student named Eugene Rastignac. They are acquainted by being one of several boarders in a respectable, if a bit shabby, boarding house in Paris, France. Goriot is the father of two married daughters, and Rastignac is, at the expense of his parents and two sisters, attempting to marry into society and wealth - but in a respectful way!

This drama has everything - murder and intrigue through the character of Vautrin, the Trick of Death. It has humor - there is an entire scene which made me think of our modern day Snoop Dog "shizzle" moments - Balzac talks about how the diorama has recently been unveiled, and as a result, in passing, humorous conversation, the morpheme "orama" is added to the end of random words - such as Goriot-orama. There is an entire scene at the dinner table in which words are bantered about, and even referenced later in the book that had me laughing out loud in sheer delight. It has tragedy - the outcome of Father Goriot and his daughters relationship is one that, as Balzac foretells, worthy of tears. It showcases both the good and bad sides of the human character, and provides an interesting commentary on situations and feelings that are relevant still today.

Some day you will find out that there is far more happiness in another's happiness than in your own - Balzac

The human heart may find here and there a resting-place short of the highest height of affection, but we seldom stop in the steep, downward slope of hatred - Balzac

I wish I could go further into the quotes and how many things I highlighted on my Kindle - but then this entire review would be just repeated quote after quote, since there are quite a few of them. I have to encourage you to pick up this book and read it - I hope you will find it as fascinating as I did. Such an incredible story of the tragedy of life.

Hesitant at first, I rapidly developed an interest in the book. On the surface it provides a snapshot of Paris in the early 1800s. Dig a little deeper and you get a feel for what de Balzac called "The Human Comedy." Would recommend a few minutes on the internet researching the author before you begin this book. Understanding de Balzac and the place "Pere Goriot" occupies in his rich collection of books adds to the enjoyment. A very good read.

While Balzac is clearly a genius and Reed does an incredible job translating, this book is not a good story, but just a platform to get the author's views on society and human nature across. There are exhaustingly long descriptions of places and characters, and endless monologues. In the end we don't find out what happens to one of the key characters, and it just seemed like a grand waste of time to me. Also, some of the prose is written in an unnecessarily flowery way making it a slow read where you are not even sure what he is talking about. I would have preferred to spend my time bouncing a ball off a wall.

This is a great novel. Read it for an English course and enjoyed it. Great experience ordering book and was a great price. Recieved it in a timely manner.