An intense, passionate, and profoundly moving work, Flaubert's November explores the notions of desire and longing to most remarkable effect. Wrestling with the agony of loneliness, a young man withdraws deeper into himself, believing he has now reached the autumn of his life. His increasing hopelessness gives way to a yearning for romance—surely the love of a woman can deliver him the purpose he so craves? Convinced of the truth of this, he visits Marie, a kindhearted prostitute—yet Marie, too, is starved of love and longs for acceptance. Together, they form a tragic portrait of personal anguish, heralding the extraordinary outpouring of romantic longing found in Flaubert’s later novels. Most famous for Madame Bovary and Sentimental Education: The Story of a Young Man, Gustave Flaubert is one of the undisputed masters of 19th-century fiction.
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"An impressively chosen list." -- Simon Schama
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Since its U.S. launch in 2003, Hesperus Press has enjoyed a growing reputation for its inspired selection of short classic works. Written by illustrious authors, and often unjustly neglected or simply little known in the English-speaking world, these works have been made accessible via a completely fresh editorial approach and new translations. Now, in addition to the Hesperus Classics, Hesperus Press is introducing a new series: Modern Voices. Drawing from the very best of 20th-century literature, Modern Voices will retain the exceptional quality of the Hesperus Classics, with a new series look that reflects the more modern nature of the list. Among the first authors will be Carlo Levi, Katherine Mansfield, and Graham Greene, and Hesperus has already secured prominent contemporary writers like Anita Desai, William Boyd, and Colum McCann to introduce the books—again retaining one of the key successes of the Hesperus Classics. Finally,! 2005 heralds the launch of the Hesperus Contemporary series, opening with The Nightingale Papers, the fiction debut of prize-winning biographer David Nokes.
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Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880), the younger son of a provincial doctor, briefly studied law before devoting himself to writing, with limited success during his lifetime. After the publication of Madame Bovary in 1857, he was prosecuted for offending public morals.
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6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Art at its purest form,
By "hypocrite_no1" (Linkoping, Sweden) - See all my reviews
This review is from: November (Paperback)
This is not a novel, this is not poetry, this is nothing but art. In a very short text, Flaubert has managed to flow out feelings described with an unforeseen accurateness that makes us relate closer not only to the author but also to ourselves, for here, for the first time, do things we have felt for so long, go under names.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fires of Imagination Becomes Cold Ashes of Dead Youth,
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This review is from: November (Hesperus Classics) (Paperback)
This is a beautifully written novella, makes me wish I was fluent enough in French to read it in the author's original language. There are sculpted sentences filled with exotic imagery, as well as some genuine insights into the nature of the human condition, spelled out in language that manages to be rich and vivid while at the same time plain enough to impart its wisdom to the casual reader. To put it in shorthand, this is a novel about what our dreams are when we're young and enchanted by the world, by notions of love, why we dream of these things, and how we disappoint ourselves on the one hand because of some perceived life-stagnation, or what have you; and then, moments later, the fires of our imaginations seem to re-ignite to ten times what they were, and we are swept off on new whirlwind journeys, soaring above intangible landscapes of all the things we might be capable of doing, of thinking and dreaming. All of it sounds really great at first, but this novel ends on a note that seems pensive and a little sorrowful.The first part of this tale is told in the first person, sort of Flaubert's semi-autobiographical prose-poetic tribute to his youth. Then, a few pages from the end of the novel (which is short, only about 100 pages), it changes to third person, and we read an unknown narrator's short treatise on the person whose first person musings you've just finished: Flaubert's critique of his youthful self, I presume. This second, third-person part of the novel was, for me anyway, the most interesting part of the novel, because it put all of the glittering imagery back into real world context. If this novel can be said to convey a message, it is that the affinity for dreams and flights of fancy often goes hand in hand with the "fear of doing", and that it's important to strike a balance between the two in one's life. Readers who enjoyed this may also enjoy the novellla "The Hill of Dreams" by Arthur Machen, which contains similar themes and is even more oneiric and image-rich than "November", if that's possible.
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