You'll have to like slow-rated stories... but that one will seduce you! There's some fantastic in it, with the famous quest of the Philosophal Stone. And also many psychology, with the interaction of all those souls living together in a rich house in Belgium.

The first pages of that book are VERY important, explaining WHY Balzac just does not like to enter his novels "in medias res". Of course he takes his time to explain... So the reticent Balzac reader may understand better the writer. Not bad, eh?

No one knows more about money problems than Honore de Balzac. He lived most of his life one step from his creditors: his house in Paris even had a special exit for avoiding them. CESAR BIROTTEAU is the story of an honest perfumer who is done in by the smarmy du Tillet, a former employee whom he had fired for embezzlement, who works in secret to take his revenge.

Birotteau is lured into overextending himself and falls hard. True to his fascination with money and its epedemiology, Balzac delves into the guts of this bankruptcy and shows you all the forces at work to destroy an innocent man.

This time, the innocent man prevails. Thanks to the help of Anselme Popinot, a brilliant young marketer in love with his daughter, Birotteau is able to pay back every cent, winning honor for himself after his life appeared to be all but over.

This is one of Balzac's greatest novels. Birotteau is an honorable gentleman of the old school, a bit obtuse perhaps, but out of his depth among the wild speculations of the reign of Charles X. Watching these processes ensnare him is repellingly fascinating -- and Balzac spares us nothing.

The genius of Honore de Balzac is his incomparable ability to express the human condition in such abundant variety and his short story "Sarrasine" (1830) is no exception. In addition to being a truly marvelous addition to his expansive "The Human Comedy", "Sarrasine" is also the earliest of three pre-Decadent tales. (The other two are "The Girl With the Golden Eyes" and "Seraphita.") Balzac anticipates the Decadent movement of the late nineteenth century by blurring the distinction between masculinity and femininity in his depiction of Monsieur Sarrasine and the beautiful opera singer La Zambinella. In richly descriptive prose Balzac paints dazzling portraits of the lovestruck young Parisian and the exotic Italian soprano. The atmosphere becomes increasingly phantasmagorical as Sarrasine, intoxicated with desire for La Zambinella, plots a romantic kidnapping of his beloved and is in turn the victim of deception and violence. The surprise ending may not astonish those acquainted with French Decadent fiction, but for the uninitiated it will be an orgy of sexual ambiguity, passion, jealousy, and violence.

Old father Goriot made a fortune off other people's misery, selling bread at extortionate prices during a famine. His wealth didn't do him or his family a bit of good.

His beloved wife died young, leaving him two adored daughters, Anastasie and Delphine. Goriot gave away all his money to them when they married. He wasn't allowed to live with either daughter. After all, he was just a baker and they and their new husbands were high society. So the old man spent his life in a flophouse.

In this world of French high society, family values go something like this. Everyone commits adultery openly. Husbands give their wives very little money to live on. Instead they spend on their girlfriends. Wives fall desperately in love with scoundrels. As Frank Zappa once said, I'm harder than your husband - to get along with.

Enter our hero, Eugene de Rastignac, the one innocent person in the book. Granted that his values are distorted and his ambition in life is to be a high roller in society, but he's French so what do you expect?

It's a small world. He lives in Goriot's flophouse and they are great friends. He enters society and meets a terribly unhappy wife and jilted adulterous lover, a girl named Delphine. Where did we hear that name before?

Will Eugene and Delphine fall in love? Will Eugene make it in French society, as if we care? Will old pere Goriot's daughters come to visit him before he dies? Some of these questions might be answered by the end.

Father Goriot by Honoré de Balzac is one of the works of La Comédie Humaine. The plot of the story is rather complicated, but as the novel approaches the end, everything starts falling into its proper place. Both wealthy and poor classes are analyzed in the novel through the actions and interests of individuals. Vice characterizes the nature of Parisian society; for this reason, vice opposes and also prevails over virtue . Of course, in order to create the drama of the novel, vice is used to represent a large section of the people living in Paris at the time. The novel illustrates a large segment of the human condition during the first half of the nineteenth century. Furthermore, the powerful evil over good theme of the novel is rather devastating.

This was the first Balzac book I had ever read because I was told it was his best. I found myself reading it at a fairly quick pace enjoying the bulk of it. Unfortunately the plot goes stale from about pages 30 - 60 but from then on in it is superb. Goriot is a wonderfully written ex pasta merchant who's good intentions are constantly met by depression, mostly thanks to his two daughters Delphine (M. de Nucingen) and Anastasie (M. de Restaud.) They are a pair of spoiled little girls who take their father for granted which eventually brings about his demise. Eugene Rastignac is a countryboy trying to climb into Parisienne society but discovers that it is unfulfilling and empty. Vautrin, a recurring psycopath in Balzac's books, makes an appearance but seems to leave rather suddenly.

Overall an excellently written story, although after I read Eugenie Grandet by Balzac I have to admit i preffered that one. None the less, still worth it, better than any of the stuff being printed today.

Warning: Every one of Balzac's characters usually has at least two different names, you musrt be fully aware of both of their names at the beginning or you will find yourself grasping and losing the plot.

Balzac was one of the best writers of the 19th century, he is France's greatest novelist in my opinion, and one of the best who ever lived. LOST ILLUSIONS is perhaps his greatest work, one of the great novels of world literature. With statements like these, you better believe I'm not going to pan this book. I first read it in Thailand back in 1984---the sense of contrast between my physical and mental surroundings at the time was like sugar and chilli pepper. I recently reread it and found it just as good.

I like novels that give me a sense of time and place. Balzac, unlike many great authors, set out to give his readers exactly that. The vast sweep of French, and more particularly, Parisian society, that he depicts in "The Human Comedy"---the varied series of novels by other names that he wrote over his relatively short lifetime---cannot but amaze any reader. "Old Goriot", "Cousin Bette", "The History of the Thirteen", "Eugenie Grandet" and others are wonderful books, but I would say that this is his best. Balzac investigates everything; no detail is too unimportant. In the present work, we learn about the petty intrigues of provincial society, paper making, the printing business, the theater, journalism, Paris high society, the book trade, the legal profession, Paris styles and that's just a start. Where Tolstoy described the early 19th century Russian upper class with romance, philosophy, and general benevolence, Balzac writes with cynicism and a down-to-earth realism. We meet snobs, idiots, geniuses, knaves, priests, poets, politicians, intellectuals, misers, wastrels, whores, rogues, lechers, dandies, and ambitious businessmen of all kinds. Natasha never goes to a ball wide-eyed and innocent in Balzac. At 682 pages, LOST ILLUSIONS is not a quick read, but you will savor every page. The plot does not get bogged down in description either, but keeps you wondering right up to the last page. There are actually two stories that dovetail neatly. Two young men full of ambition go in opposite directions. One opts for the easy road of flash and fashion, making good impressions with the right people, the other for the lonely, penurious road of hard work as an inventor. The stories separate as Lucien Chardon, the would-be poet, goes to Paris, and David Séchard stays in their provincial hometown. They join again when Lucien comes home in defeat, and the ending is a surprise turn. LOST ILLUSIONS, to me, is nearly a perfect novel, both entertaining and informative. Balzac makes the world of France in the early 1820s come alive---you can almost taste the oysters, you feel the pulse of a society desperate for life and pleasure after a generation of war. You can grasp the full meaning of the word "provincialism". If you have any taste for classical literature, don't miss this book ! When I measure novels, this one of the handful which I use as my measuring stick.

As much as I enjoyed Pere Goriot, Lost Illusions is the kind of a literary work that lets you peer into the soul of a great mind and dwell there. Just as Lucien was Balzac, the lost poet, David Sechard, the printer, is also Balzac the craftsman in real life: he bought a print shop in Paris to print his own novels. Sechard is much like the scientist in the Quest of the Absolute, except that David ultimately finds himself through his invention and the inventor in The Quest becomes lost to his own monomania. As Balzac wrote of Lucien: "He's not a poet, this young man: he's a serial novel." And so it's time to find out what happens to Lucien after this novel in his return to Paris. The characters of his novels keep reappearing in scenes from one novel to the next, which is wonderful. However, they seem to change as one sees them through different eyes. Delightful young Rastignac in Pere Goriot becomes a rather unscrupulous mean-spirited character in Lost Illusions. Balzac has built an entire society of his characters and as varied as they are, they are all also him and show the great diversity and depth of his personality and sensitivity. Like Galsworthy, Balzac wanted to build an interconnected society of characters who are so human that it's easy to understand why they behave as they do. The realism is striking and magnificent and always rings true. Balzac works hard despite the realism to spin out of every hardship a redemption and out of every malignity a comic side that's all too human. The comedy and irony are rich in Balzac in his passionate account of life in Paris in high society and the challenges that it thrusts upon every ideal. This is the best work of Balzac that I have read so far out of four novels of his. It's such great writing, and the energy of the translator can make a difference, that Balzac keeps one coming back for more. But the writing and wit and wisdom are so extraordinary, I am happy to accommodate him. Anyone who has ever aspired to write and publish prose in New York will identify with Blazac's Lucien: Lost Illusions is a novel that aspiring writers especially may find intriguing.

Without questions, Balzac is one of the most masterful fiction writers in history. In 'Lost Illusions' the world within his literature is as vivid and convincing as ever. The story is based upon a young man who leaves the provincial life to seek his success in Paris. Like New York, Paris has never been an easy place to climb, and in the City of Light the struggle is further compounded by an elitist format of acceptance which is extremely difficult for an outsider to decipher. Thus our hopeful aspirant rides a roller coaster of exultation and tribulation that gets under his skin like a drug which he cannot quit, even though it threatens his ruin (a ruin not without immense repercussions). Beyond the storyline, this is quintessential Balzac- his detailed descriptions and flair for grand and convoluted dramas which evolve in the most fascinating times and places (here- Paris early 1800's, I believe) makes this a treasure of epic proportions.

I read this story in Junior High as part of a reading study for class and was truely fascinated by the imagery of De Balzac. I always remembered it as a favorite and where that book is today i don't know, but i was completely surprised when i recently rented a movie and saw "Passion in the Desert" as one of the previews! I don't remember the story being long enough for a movie, but that's never stopped a movie from being filmed and produced before. If someone could please help me locate this story, i would be much obliged!

An extremely imaginative story. The exoticism and mystery of the setting and characters (one of the main protagonists is a large feline) will fascinate long after you've finished the book. Haunting.

This was a story that I read in school and was so impressed that I purchased a book of short stories that this appeared in. The author's use of emotion and imagery is outstanding and this is probably the best short story that I have ever read.

"Beauty is the greatest of human powers. All autocratic unbridled power with nothing to counterbalance it, leads to abuse, mad excess. Despotism is power gone mad. In women, despotism takes the form of satisfying their whims". This remark engulfs Balzac's opera: To collate the audience with the obliterating debauchery society of 18th century France. Lisbeth Fischer aka Cousin Bette lurks in every chapter as a concealed beast coveting her prey (The house of Hulot) under the same roof. Perhaps Balzac's major achievement in this master piece, is to portrait a flauntering society feigned by its ostentatious opulence but immerse on a licentious and decadent life. "The savage has feelings... only the civilized man has feelings and ideas." Balzac seems to banter at Parisians with this idea: how civilized, civilized society can be. I strongly recommend this book if you intend to follow De Laclos work in Les Liasions Dangereuses. As an amateur reader I founded the characters difficult to identify at the beginning, however is an strategy smartly set by Balzac and very much appreciated as soon as you start to realize and pace through the richness of the narration.

In this most paradoxical of all novels, Destiny takes revenge on the ungrateful cousin Bette, eptihome of ugliness of soul. Wonderful tale of unfaithfulness, deception, betrayal and lust, as well as hatred, set in middle Nineteenth century Paris, in the world of high finance and politics. The Hulots are a wealthy family. Hortense is Bette's cousin, who has made a fortunate marriage (to Bette's beloved, though). Hortense is good to her cousin, bringing her to live with them in a beautiful house. The Hulots are good to her, but she only wants revenge. And so, she tries with all her might to destroy the family. She has many chances to do it, because the Hulots are flawed, especially the men, who are womanizers of the highest sort. Intrigue is Bette's favorite sport, intrigue with meanness and cruelty. But no good comes from bad deeds, and life, the always ironic life, will not allow Bette's deeds to accomplish her revenge. She does accomplish much evil and disgrace, but the unfolding of events prevents her from triumph. Fortunately, since the good characters get to go on with their imperfect but mostly rewarding lives. This novel is one of Balzac's best (and there are many good ones). It belongs to the best canon of Western literature and will stand the test of time, once again because it touches on the universal features of human soul, ungratefulness being one of the most pervasive. Highly recommended, not least because the reader enjoys all the back-stabbing and the ultimate defeat of the ugly lady. Indeed, we see that envy is one of the worst sins.

This is a remarkable book, setting the template for Flaubert and Zola's respective journeys into the sordid human psyche.

Lisbeth is a peasant girl from Alsace, bitter at her cousin Adeline's preferential treatment during their childhood. Vindictive Bette decides to cut the family from its wealth, as well as to debase her family personally. It's not difficult when Adeline's husband Hector becomes so weak-kneed over a pretty face that he would compromise his family if it came to a choice between sex and relatives. Lisbeth maneuvers skilfully, befriending Madame Marneffe, an unhappily married woman with numerous lovers who only wants to see her sickly husband made a manager of his governmental department. Installed in this household as a spy for hector (who is smitten with Marneffe), Lisbeth works toward an alliance with Marneffe, on one side to destroy the Hulot's, on the other to gain the love of Count Steinbock, to whom Lisbeth is a benefactress.

I saw a feminist agenda in this novel. Consider: Whereas Hector Hulot is not frowned upon for his numerous infidelities, and indeed feels no guilt even though his longsuffering wife turns a blind eye, when Adeline, in trying to save her family, attempts to seduce a wealthy perfumer named Crevel, she fears dishonor for herself, and feels immeasurable guilt over the infidelity she never even commits. Could Balzac be commenting on the fact that both women and men should be allowed their indiscretions? Call it immaterial. Also, the female characters are by and large either intelligent and conniving (Madame Marneffe, Lisbeth), or beautiful and virtuous (Adeline, Hortense). The men are scandalously disloyal (Steinbock, Hector), or inneffectual and dissolute (Monsieur Marneffe, Crevel). A fresh perspective...from a male author. Great in every way, even if quite convoluted.

Superb. My first try at Balzac and I'll definitely be reading more. He makes you want to reach into the book and strangle those two horrible daughters.

I thought that this was a superb novel, containing an intriguing plot, rounded characters, along with an examination of thought-provoking issues.

Despite the title, "Old Goriot" is really the story of the law student Rastignac's attempts to make it in Parisian society. Rastignac is living at a run-down boarding house, the inhabitants of which include Old Goriot. There's a mystery surrounding Goriot and his connection with a couple of young women. The key phase of the novel, however, is when Rastignac comes under the influence of the cynical Vautrin.

There are echoes of other works in the novel - Old Goriot could be seen as a Lear-like figure, Vautrin as a kind of Mephistopheles. The main theme, however, is the ruinous effect of the pursuit of money and position for their own sakes: other more decent and human values are sacrificed on the altar of personal gain. Vautrin tempts Rastignac with a means of advancing his place in society, a method totally founded upon an amoral view of the world.

At the end of the novel, it's up to the reader to decide which of the characters was right all along. Was it Vautrin?

Balzac's "Old Goriot" both celebrates and satirizes early 19th Century Parisian society and its idiosyncrasies. In terms of the variety of characters it introduces and the themes covered, it is a novel of incredibly wide scope, written with efficiency and some of the most beautiful prose, at least via Marion Crawford's English translation.

Goriot is an elderly gentleman living in a Paris boardinghouse in 1819. He used to be a prosperous vermicelli merchant, but hard times of late have forced him to pawn off his remaining precious possessions and move into the cheapest room available in the house. Since running afoul of the landlady Madame Vauquer, whose romantic attentions he once spurned, he has become an object of ridicule to the other boarders, due to his shabby clothes and apparent senility.

Most of the novel's action, however, centers around another of the boarders, a law student named Eugene de Rastignac who comes from a modest family. Rastignac's situation and motives are easy for any urban young man to identify with: He is eager to climb into the upper echelons of Paris society, but he finds to his dismay that the fashionable Parisian women are not interested in paupers. His wealthy cousin, Madame de Beauseant, advises him that he must be ruthless to make it in high society. With his cousin's help, Rastignac acquaints himself with two young society matrons, Anastasie, the Countess de Restaud, and Delphine, the Baroness de Nucingen, who happen to be Goriot's daughters.

Goriot's relationship to his daughters provides the basis for the novel. He spoiled them rotten as little girls; consequently, they grew up irresponsible, greedy, and ungrateful. Having married wealthy men, they both seek consolation from their unhappy marriages through reckless spending and extramarital beaus. Despite their faults, Goriot loves and cares for his daughters with something more like a neurotic obsession than warm, paternal devotion. You can't help feel sorry for the guy, suffering from his delusions, selling everything he owns, and living in squalor so that his daughters, who are unable or unwilling to fend for themselves or fight their own battles, can stay financially solvent.

There is an interesting subplot involving another boarder at Madame Vauquer's house, a devilish, unscrupulous fellow named Vautrin who may not be what he initially appears to be. Vautrin knows Rastignac is trying to get his foot in the door of Parisian society and he knows he needs money to do it. He proposes this scheme: Rastignac will marry a poor girl dwelling at the boardinghouse named Victorine; Vautrin will have Victorine's brother killed so that she'll inherit the whole of her father's fortune, which will bring Rastignac into big money and high society, and he can pay Vautrin for collusion. The way Balzac plays out this scenario without letting it become an interference with the main story line of Rastignac's relationship to Goriot's daughters is quite a deft feat of plotting.

I just had to find out what happened to Lucien, when he was so mysteriously (and admittedly, a bit too miraculously) saved from suicide at the end of Illusions Perdues. This is the place to find it.

The interesting thing is that Lucien is not the principal player here: it is an equally mysterious mentor, whose identity and methods are revealed as the plot thickens. Another character is the "harlot" from the title in English, which misconstrues the character of the novel. She is Esther, who is Lucien's true love, whom he uplifts from prostitution to install as his secret mistress. There is also Nucingen, the Jewish banker whom Balzac despises (from the novel of the same name), and several wily spies.

I must say that, though I love Balzac, this novel wore a bit thin on me: it has too many unlikely coincidences and is crowned with a cynicism in the surprise ending that stretched way beyond what I could believe, even when taking into account the French judicial system. That being said, Balzac offers a wonderful tour of the underbelly of the life of the scheming courtesan: without revealing too much of the plot, having given up on art, Lucien is trying to enter the aristocracy as a diplomat with the rank of Marquise. But to do so, he had to marry the right woman, buy his ancestral grounds, and somehow pose as a dandy when he is in fact flat broke. One pole of the plot revolves around the maneuvering of his mentor, who proves himself exceptionally cunning, the other around Lucien's true love. Needless to say, there are betrayals, hidden enemies, and ruthless manipulations that destroy oh-so-many lives. In the end, it is mostly sad, except for...well, you have to read it to believe it! The view of the aristocracy in this one is rather oblique as they play behind the scenes, while I expected them to play center stage.

If there is one thing to sum up Balzac, it could be this: there is one chapter entitled, "boring chapter to explain four years of happiness" in which Lucien in love is portrayed. When I told my wife that it was winding down, she replied: "don't you mean it is grinding down?"

As usual, you need a strong stomach for this one. I got bored by the middle, at the height of all the unbearably sleazy maneuvering, but the last 200 pages really picked up the pace. To wit: I enjoyed the characters hurtling toward destruction in this one, which is usually the opposite: I prefer their hopes and hate their falls, except in the case of Lucien.

If you've read and enjoyed Lost Illusions, a novel widely (and correctly) considered one of Balzac's classics, A Harlot High and Low is almost certainly worth your time. It's not as powerful or satisfying as Lost Illusions, but it does pick up and complete the story of Lucien, that book's maddening protagonist. The true central figure of A Harlot High and Low, however, is "Father Carlos Herrera," who is really the criminal Jacques Collin, or Vautrin (from Old Goriot). (I'm not giving away any plot twists here, Balzac doesn't withhold the character's double, or triple identity.) That said, the first hundred pages or so are pretty heavy going, especially compared to Lost Illusions, and the plot setup is overly complicated. But once things pick up steam, it's a page-turner, with the usual array of entertaining characters, and the usual withering portrait of early 19th century Parisian society. Is it realistic? Well, let's just say some of the plot twists are improbable, but so what? It's a fine tale.

I was hungry for this book for months after the end of Lost Illusions, which concluded saying that Luciens life in Paris would be continued in Scenes from Paris Life, obviously an abstract title to the Paris series of the Human Comedy. Finially I found it. This read much faster than Lost Illusions. There was more action packed into fewer pages, which really quenched my thirst for all the characters that I knew from Balzacs other novels and their going ons about Paris. This novel epitomizes Balzacs gossipy toned, money ridden, scandelous style . If you are daunted by the heavy and lengthy discriptions that fill so many substantially sized French novels, this is definitly an unintimidating enjoyable read! As juicy as the most scandelous TV show, although it may cheapen such fine writing to make a comparison like that!

This is a simple, moral tale - one could almost describe it as a fable - concerned with the dangers of all-consuming avarice. Monsieur Grandet, his wife and their daughter Eugenie live in provincial Saumur. Grandet is a wealthy miser - so parsimonious that his house is falling down around him for want of repair, and even the family's food is rationed. The arrival of Grandet's nephew, the ambitious yet impecunious Charles, disturbs the household regime - Eugenie falls in love with him - and thereafter a tragedy unfolds.

I thought the novel almost read like a compressed Dickens: the characters are essentially two-dimensional, more illustrations of human faults and virtues than true to life. The book's brevity and (therefore) lack of meandering, coupled with a merciful omission of overdone bathos in its depiction of women, made its impact all the greater than having to plough through 1000 pages of Dickensian whimsy.

Balzac seemed concerned with the damage being done to human relationships by contemporary society's obsession with money. In "Eugenie Grandet", everything has its price - the characters only have worth in terms of their personal monetary wealth. It struck me that this has been a recurring theme in modern fiction - a questioning within capitalist societies of whether the material wealth that is produced by the economic system underpinning those societies is of itself a sufficiently fulfilling raison d'etre, or whether more is needed to meet human needs.

It is a delightful short tale of a pathetic story. Eugenie Grandet is not be the best novel from Balzac, but their characters are truly unforgetable. Reading this book would be a very satisfying experience. A Hint: Read it after Ursula Miruët; the stories are not connected, but a comparison of the heroines, and endings of both stories, worths the pain.

This is without a doubt one of my absolute favorites. I read La Pere Goriot before I read this one thinking it was great. After reading this I was convinced that Balzac was easily one of the best authors ever.

The story focuses around the members of the Grandet family. The Father is a miser the likes of which you have never seen, a cruel man willing to ruin his family in his pursuit of money and gold. He owns a wine field in the small town and within the first fifty pages he is already ripping the town off. Mme. Grandet is the poor wife who has become used to her husband's pettiness but seems unfulfilled. Eugenie, the daughter is a young girl who has lived a sheltered and restrained life in the enormous house, never realising what the outside world has to offer.

The story is really quite simple. Charles, Mr Grandet's nephew comes to visit the family (his father has killed himself but he doesn't know that until Mr. Grandet shows him the suicide letter.) Eugenie falls in love, the Parisienne fop and the two have a quick love affair, Charles goes away a and promises to return one day so that they may marry, and a lot more which I'm not so silly as to ruin for you.

The story is an extremely sad affair. Eugenie is so wonderfully written that you begin to feel sorry for her position and that she has never really seen true happiness. Overall, a touching book, well worth the read. Much better than many of the other classics out there, believe me.

Balzac is so underated.