The Lily of the Valley [Paperback]

Honore De Balzac (Author), Lucienne Hill (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1989

The creator of "Human Comedy" brings his ins ight to a portrait of a lady and a love affair set in the Lo ire Valley. The Lily of the Valley is one of Balzac''s person al favourites amoungst his innumerable novels '

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This was Balzac's personal favorite among his writings. The novel offers the courtship of Felix and fiancee Henrietta, whose correspondence on the subject of love reveals her to be far more experienced than he thought. Romance the Balzac way.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"In reading Balzac we can still feel and almost gratify those cravings which great literature ought to allay in us." - Marcel Proust --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 255 pages
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub; 1st Carroll & Graf Ed edition (July 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0881844829
• ISBN-13: 978-0881844825
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,896,314 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A huge joke, October 13, 2005

By 

Guillermo Maynez (Mexico, Distrito Federal Mexico) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lily of the Valley (Paperback)

That is this book: a huge joke. Of course I won't reveal the ending, but it's definitely that. The other two reviewers on this page have noted that Balzac regarded this novel, certainly not his best, as one of his favourites, and I think that is due to the fact that throughout it he is playing with the characters and with the reader. One of the reviewers also noted the similarity with subjects treated by Stendhal and Falubert, and indeed it would be good if someone (I may do it one day) wrote an essay comparing this novel to Stendhal's "Red and Black" and Flaubert's "The Sentimental Education".

This is what literary critics call a "bildungsroman", a novel of apprenticeship -or lack of it. Apparently a Romantic novel, it can also be read from the other side of the street, as an Anti-Romantic novel. The experienced reader of Balzac is surprised that here he turns out so much corniness and cheap sentimentality, until he/she finds out why at the end.

Felix de Vandenesse is the youngest child of a noble family of Touraine, in beautiful Western Central France, whose luck has been bad under the Revolution and the Napoleonic Age. Nobody loves poor Felix, especially his horrible mother, who sends him to live first with a breast-feeder and then to cruel boarding schools where he suffers from loneliness and poverty. During his return home, he attends a party where he instantly falls in love with a married woman, older than him. In fact, he falls so in love that he kisses her shoulder, to the astonishment and rejection of the surprised lady. Felix then falls into depression and his mother sends him to the countryside with some rich friends. And... surprise surprise, the neighbor of the friends is none other than the lady and her husband and two permanently sick kids. Felix befriends the Mortsauf family and starts a strange, indeed sick, romance with his beloved, Henriette, Madame de Mortsauf. It's a platonic, repressed and tormented love affair. The four memebers of the Mortsauf family are among the strangest and most complex in all of literature, especially the Count and Henriette. The former is an asylum lunatic suffering from bipolar depressive disease, big time. He is hypochondriac, coleric, verbally violent, blackmailer and unsympathetic, and he makes life hell to his wife and kids. Henriette is also an emotional blackmailer, a religious fanatic, martyr by vocation, overprotecting mother and a lover with the Wendy complex: she feels herself to be the mother Felix never really had. The kids are two morbid creatures with a foot in the tomb, who appear and disappear like the children in Henry James's "Turn of the Screw". The novel is written in the form of a long letter Felix writes to his current lover many years after the events.

After some months by Henriette's side, young -and virgin- Felix leaves for Paris, where he will enjoy contacts in high places, provided by Henriette's parents. When he leaves, Felix carries a wonderful letter written by Henriette, in which she gives him sound advice about how to deal with the world of politics, sex, and business. It's one of the best parts of the novel. Through the years, Felix comes and goes keeping the platonic relationship with her. But then he gets an English lover and it all goes to the dogs. The scene of the confrontation with Henriette on the subject of the sexuallly greedy lover comes right out of a bad soap-opera: "I enjoy her body but it's you I really love" , "I'll never be yours but then no other can be".

In the end cruel and funny, it is a little piece of psychological penetration, a dissertation on human nature, an examination of love, and the analysis of a twisted passion.

15 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Balzac's favorite, February 7, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Lily of the Valley (Paperback)

Of all of Balzac's 93 odd novels this one was his personal favorite. This is the sixth book of his I've read and I think it's probably one of the worst. That's not saying it's bad, it just doesn't compare to the brilliance of Eugenie Grandet, Ursule Mirouet, Pere Goriot or Cesar Birroteau.

The plot centers around Felix, a young man who has had a difficult time growing up. One night at a prestigious ball he falls in love with Madame de Morstauf or Henriette. He then goes up to her house in Toraine in a beautiful valley and spends great lengths of time with her.

Her husband is a tyrannical type of guy, prone to violent fits but Henriette is determined to stick with the marriage. Felix and her develop an odd kind of relationship, almost like brother and sister. Felix then falls in love with an Englishwoman realizing he has no chance with Henriette. Henriette dies of jealousy.

That is a very sketchy plot outline.

The book is too long and a bit boring for Balzac. His lead male charcters are always variations on the same thing and he spends far too much time dealing with atmosphere and surroundings.

As usual Balzac uses words like "ardent", "ardour" and several others far too much and in each of his novels I've noticed that all of his characters mention at one point that they are willing to sacrifice themselves for their lovers. Of course they never do.

There are many wonderful parts to this book, especially a cutting letter describing the differences between French and English women.

A very good book, but for Balzac, my favorite, this is one of the weaker ones.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Bravo Balzac, November 13, 2009

By 

M. R. Mcconnochie "M. R. McConnochie" (Melbourne, Victoria Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Lily of the Valley (Paperback)

One of Balzac's lesser known novels, this is a romantic, sardonic and delicate

story of repressed passion, set in the Loire which he describes with characteristic

richness.