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Type of bind: Paperback
EAN num: 9781605890456
ISBN number: 1605890456
Label: Quill Pen Classics
Manufacturer: Quill Pen Classics
Page Count: 37
Printing Date: July 21, 2008
Publishing house: Quill Pen Classics
Sale Popularity Level: 626276
Studio: Quill Pen Classics
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
One of 60 low-priced classic texts published to celebrate Penguin's 60th anniversary. All the titles are extracts from 'Penguin Classics' titles.
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Rated by buyers 
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Gustave Flaubert (1821 to 1880) was a French writer who is still considered to be among the greatest western novelists. He authored Madama Bovary which is considered to be the perfectly balanced modern novel. That novel and the author's style and approach has been hailed by a range of writers and critics including, for example, Saul Bellow, who modeled his own novels from Flaubert's works. Fluabert's writings have been referenced by Nabokov and many others as being an inspiration to a whole century of Western writers, and helped to launch the age of realism in novels.
The present story comes from the 1877 publication Three Tales (Trois Contes. It consists of the short stories: Simple Heart, Saint Julian, and Herodias. Dance of Death is another story sometimes grouped with Simple Heart and Saint Julian as Three Short Works.
A Simple Heart was inspired by biographical events in Flaubert's own life: he lived in rural Normandy, he had problems with his studies similar to the character Paul, and he was prone to epileptic seizures similar to the protagonist Felicite.
I read the story very first without looking at any analysis, made up my own mind, then read the analysis. What struck me was that Flaubert had crammed a whole lifetime of human emotions into a single very short story. That all by itself was impressive. How could someone come up with that idea? Amazing.
A Simple Heart, also called A Simple Soul or Un Coeur Simple, in French, is a story about a girl named Felicité. She is a servant who has lived with the same family ever since she was betrayed by her lover. She has a strong sense of loyalty and self sacrifice: she lives to help others.
This short story has been admired by many critics over the years and used as a basis or a source of inspiration for other stories.
This takes only an hour or so to read and is highly recommended.
Rated by buyers -
Amazing writing. Sentence by sentence Flaubert takes you from a point A to a point B that you would deride as ridiculous if you were told that's where it's going at the start.
We used this story at a library great books meeting once and the result was fantastic. Half of the group had one opinion of the main character and half had a diammetrically opposite opinion. It made for a great debate though everyone agreed that the story was magnificently written.
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Quite simply, a literary masterpiece. Simply written, 'A Simple Heart' evokes depth from simplicity, beauty from tragedy, humanity from suffering. Flaubert's world endures and remains relevant, because the human heart simply remains unchanged.
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Whether or not one enjoys the style of writing of Flaubert's period, this book is a masterpiece. In a handful of incidents with a maid's life, Flaubert provides us with a full character which exhibits a quiet, uneducated saintliness that weathers a life of significant hardship. The text is down-to-earth realistic description with simple items such as a map illustrating her complete lack of education and a (stuffed) parrot which the priest recognizes the importance of in a final gesture to the servant. This is a "must read" book.
Rated by buyers -
I love this nouvelle. As for the reader from New York below, their review can be summed up as follows,"I wish I could like this masterpiece of French literature, since I am such a fan, but I find it incredibly boring." Since this doesn't make any sense, I would advise disregarding his/her review.
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