Alex’s Reviews > LE ROUGE ET LE NOIR > Status Update

Shit hits the fan! Murder! Drama! Our protagonist is about to become a dad, precipitating events into chaos. Receiving a letter detailing his previous
affair, he decides that the only logical thing to do is to murder her.

Of course.

He missed.

Unsatisfied with the kind of stroboscopic relationship the protagonist has with his romantic interest, he decides to woo another woman... In order to make her jealous.

Classic.

"c'est donc toi!" (Says romantic interest n°2 after days of silence and animosity, as she hugs him with emotion)
When in the blurb they said she was intense, they sure described the character well. Even the politics, that every now and then take the fore (but do not necessarily reflect the author's position) are infinitely more intense than the first part of the book.

"ah, to feel love's keen sting" is a bit of an understatement.
I prefer the chapters in this book where the protagonists are (albeit comically) tormented by their insecurities and uncertainties. It paints a more realistic picture.

The edition I'm reading, the complete one, has 666 pages. I'm now at page 419.

So anyway, this went from mocking every Jane Austen novel to Mean Girls during the French Restauration (between both French Empires).

This first part ends as an exaggeration of everything I know from Jane Austen. The son of a carpenter in the town of Verrières is recruited in the local nobleman's family to educate their children (one of which is called Stanislas-Xavier, a hilarious name to begin with)
He very much accidentally gets an episcopal education and the first part ends with him going to Paris.

Great fun overall.