Welcome to "Jane Austen Watches South Park", a blog about classic literature and popular culture. So let's get to it, shall we?
I am currently having a bit of a East Coast/French Coast beef with 19th century French author George Sand. I picked up "Horace" at my local used book store (I'm all about The Thrift) and should have realized when the novel's synopsis mentioned the little seen bio-pic on Sand entitled, "Crappy Little Movie About George Sand Starring Hugh Grant At His Floppy Haired Peak", that it wasn't a great book. Quick fact: If a movie is mentioned in the synopsis of a book, which did not win an Oscar, or has the phrase 'A new film starring Vince Vaughn', it is a good bet that the book will be epically crappy.
So to get down to the ol' berets and croissants of my feud with Frenchie George, I believe her to be a technically bad writer. Trust me, it brings me no joy to trash on a French writer. I mean, I'm the girl who has not one but two(!) books on how to find your inner French woman-turns out my inner French woman's name is Mireille and she despises the work of Frank Llyod Wright, but that's beside the point. Sand gets bogged down in back story, the characters are as flat as a 9th century globe and her narrative framing is so glaringly bad it took my eyes off the story itself.
Sand seems to be more concerned with making a political statement about the equality of women than in writing a novel. Other writers such as Orwell or Flaubert or have made political and social statements in their novels but made it seem the statement served the story rather than the story serving the statement which is what Sand seems to have done.
Ah well, back to the bookstore it goes.
