- The Lily of the Valley

by Honoré de Balzac

Other authorsPeter Bush (Translator), Geoffrey O'Brien (Introduction)

Paperback, 2024

Status

Available

Call number

843.7

Publication

NYRB Classics (2024), 304 pages

Description

Classic Literature. Fiction. Romance. HTML: If you like your tales of tragic love to come with a stiff dose of historical realism, get ready to savor this classic from French writer Honore de Balzac. The Lily of the Valley tells the tale of star-crossed lovers Felix de Vandenesse and Henriette de Mortsauf. Will social conventions keep them apart, or will they say goodbye to the trappings of the French aristocracy to live together? Pick up this must-read romance to find out..

User reviews

LibraryThing member jkorta

Beautiful and strange, a sentimental parenthesis in the "Human Comedy", this book was inspired by Balzac's own romantic love triangle which he was working through at the time. The book has a very interesting, very curious structure. An epistolary novel of sorts, it's constructed by the triptych of

three letters, one book length one flanked by two short notes. The bulk of the book is contained in the second "letter", a long, passionate retelling of the writer's experience locked in indecision between the love of two starkly different women.

A very humorous ending, by the way!

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LibraryThing member foomy

Traumatized boy (probably Balzac himself) falls in love with a married woman who could be as old as his mother. Fate parts them from each other but he tries to make up with her daughter after his lover's death...

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