This is the second book in Balzac's pretty much unconnected La Comedie Humaine cycle of almost 100 works written and set in early 19th century France. This is set in the early post-revolutionary years when the Directory is in charge, after the end of the Terror and before the rise of Napoleon. The Chouans are peasantry-based opponents of the revolutionary regime, and some of this novel depicts the fierce fighting between these two forces. The main thrust of the novel though is the passionate and self-destructive love between the aristocratic but Republican Marie de Verneuil and the Chouan Alphonse de Montauran, and themes of love and revenge dominate much of the story. As with Father Goriot, there are good set piece scenes, but overall the narrative does not work for me, and the division of the book into three very long sections puts me off a lot, as with the continuous narrative of Pere Goriot. ( )

Chiant ( )

The first book Balzac wrote under his own name, and the first to be in his famed Human Comedy, this novel is at once historical, romantic, and melodramatic. It takes place in Brittany in 1799, just after Napoleon has taken power, at the time of a royalist, anti-revolutionary uprising. I got this book, which appears to be out of print, because someone (can't remember who) recommended it to me after I read Ninety Three by Victor Hugo.

The plot pits the daughter of a duke who has taken up the cause of the republic against a marquis who has returned, somewhat incognito, from exile to lead the royalist rebellion and his supposed mother, a real zealot for the cause. But the real interest of the story lies not in the on-again, off-again romance of the marquis and the duke's daughter, but in the characters Balzac so vividly creates and the portrait of the time and the place: the republic's military leaders, the peasant fighters of Brittany, the abandoned estates, the snobbery and viciousness of the royalist supporters, the harshness of the landscape, the spies, the treachery and deceit, the interconnections among the characters, and of course the horrors of war.

I didn't find this book as exciting as Ninety Three and I found the ending overly melodramatic but, as always, i enjoyed being in Balzac's world.

While not particularly "engaging," (I read this book twice in as many weeks, and fell asleep approximately 20 times in the process) Balzac's first signed novel poses some interesting questions. How, and with what consequences, do "history" and "fiction" coincide? How does one write the history of forgotten individuals? ( )