Sand, George

Average customer rating:

Not her best but still good
One of the largely forgotten great novels
maybe 3.5 stars
Shifting reputation
Doll house

Indiana (Oxford World's Classics)
George Sand
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0192837974

Book Description

The first novel that George Sand wrote without a collaborator, Indiana is not only a romance but also a powerful plea for change in the inequitable French marriage laws of the time, for better education for women, and for a new attitude to their position in society. Naomi Schor's introduction explores attitudes to Sand in her own time as well as more recent feminist responses, and it examines the powerful and complex patterns of imagery and relationships in the novel.

Customer Reviews:

Not her best but still good.......2007-01-27

This is not my favorite of Sand's that I have read to date, I would suggest the Devil's Pool or the Black City first, they are both shorter and much stronger. Not to say this is a bad bit of writing. Considering this is her first solo publishing venture it is very impressive. She still shows flashes of great insight, there are wonderful very quotable lines throughout the work. There are some very stricking scenes, actually the last quarter of the book is pretty riveting.

Which is good because the rest of the book is alot of very careful build up and is sort of slow in places. The book is not filled with alot of dialogue, rather we have a third person omniscient narrator who lets us know what the main characters are thinking and feeling (even if they aren't quite sure of it themselves).

Indiana is a young bride to an old man who selfishly married her because he wanted someone to take care of him in his old age. She is wasting away from a lack of love, not that Delmare is any sort of ogre really, he seems to devolve slowly into a brute but one Sand never looses complete sympathy for. Sir Ralph is Indiana's cousin and protector, as he has nothing else in the world to live for. Noun is Indiana's Creole servant that essentially is like a sister to Indiana.

Noun though is sacraficed to passion as her lover moves onto another target, Indiana. Raymon has taken seducing women very seriously for his adult life, its essentially a game to him. He is very invested in the woman he loves while he loves her but he fully expects his love to end at some point. Which of course it does because he is a cad.

There are a few other characters but these are the core of the drama, it is a much smaller cast than in the other full length novel of Sand's that I have read "Horace".

I agree with one of the other reviewers that it is very interesting to see that the events of the book are indeed shaped by the events that are happening in France as well. It takes place when there is still a king in power, but the revolution is stirring very vigorously by the end of the novel and informs the actions of a few of the characters.

I'm not sure what I thought about the conclusion, it was a little odd as it is told by an unnamed first person character--seemed a little weird, almost as if Sand was trying to make her story have a sort of mythic or legendary tone to it.

A good read and not too hard to get into or to follow, possibly good for someone who likes Dickens or Eliot.

One of the largely forgotten great novels.......2006-03-03

George Sand's Indiana dramatizes and explores a wide variety of concerns in the nineteenth century with a brilliance one rarely finds in a first novel: Arranged marriages, what it means to be a Creole, colonialism and plantation profiteering, slavery, the beginnings of the deterioration of Old Europe, and the rise of the businessman. In terms of narrative style, this may be one of the most unique novels I have read. The use of narrator to facilitate multiple endings is ingenious as well as baffling. Once you get to the end and discover who the narrator is or could be, you will likely want to re-read the novel, and voila! It's like experiencing the novel for the first time. It is a very rare talent indeed to create one novel for a first reading and a second novel for a second reading. It's a mystery to me how Sand has lost much of her notoriety. This novel is far superior than most you will find anywhere and in any language.

maybe 3.5 stars.......2006-02-25

My first experience with Gerge Sand was her Fadette in Japanese translation. The translation was poor, but the story was quite interesting and what she was trying to get at was very fresh and different. I enjoyed it very much.
This one, Indiana, however, was a real sentimental melodrama. Or, perhaps Danielle Steele 19th century edition. The hero and the heroine are bathed in ill-fortunes from their births, pounded by miseries and heartbreaks, starving for love, but exhibit great courage and virtue under the grip of uncontrollable fate. In the end, the heaven will smile at them.
The characters are rather flat, very predictable and uninteresting. I had a very difficult time sympathizing any of the characters. The narrator pities them too much and doesn't give you room to sympathyze them.
Speaking of the narrator, I thought for sure it was a woman, because of the way Indiana's sufferings were narrated, but in the end I found out that it was a young man! Perhaps young men back in those days were as melodramatic and emotional as this narrator. I don't know.

Yet, there was something to this story. Sand seemed to have a lot to tell, she had a point of views, some messages to tell. And there was enough depths and intellect to what she was trying to deliver. And that's what kept me going, and that's what kept this story from falling vulgar and becoming Harlequinn romance.

I contemplated on selling this book after reading it, but I'm having a second thought. Maybe I'll keep it after all.

Shifting reputation.......2005-04-06

Remembered mostly as the lover of Chopin and other celebrities of the nineteenth-century art world, Sand seems to be little-read these days. Yet in her day, she was the most respected woman writer in the world.

This was her first solo effort. She collaborated on a previous novel, but referred to Indiana as her first. Some of the dialogue is decidedly overheated; real Harlequin Romance, bodice-ripper stuff. The story however, is very strong, with constant surprising twists, right to the end. As usual in melodrama, the villains are more interesting than the heroes, who at times make you want to shake some sense into them.

The theme has obvious parallels with Flaubert's "Madame Bovary" and Kate Chopin's "The Awakening". Ironically, the latter author, sharing the name of Sand's most famous lover, is more widely read today.

The novel has many references to French social and political life, and more than a few pages which are pure polemic. We learn more about Sand's views on French society than about Indiana's. Some readers will welcome these as fascinating historical insights; others will regard them as annoying distractions. The timeline of the story includes the revolution of 1830 and although this action provides a background rather than taking center stage, it neatly meshes with the mental turmoil of the heroine.

The Signet Classic edition has an excellent introduction by Marylon Yalom.

Doll house.......2005-02-11

George Sand (nee Amantine-Aurore-Lucile Dupin) is the kind of name I've seen in the novels of more famous writers and in the footnotes of those novels, but her own suffer from a lack of visibility on the shelves of libraries and bookstores nowadays. Reading her early novel "Indiana," I see why she was so popular and influential in her era (admirers included George Eliot and Henry James); although she is not the equal of her contemporaries Hugo and Flaubert, her writing has plenty of momentum and is pervaded by an unprecedented psychological awareness that seems well ahead of its time.

On the surface, "Indiana" is about loveless marriage, illicit romance, and the violence that results; but the characters are much more compelling and the narrative is more surprising than such a description might imply. Sand's titular heroine, whose unusual name refers not to Hoosier enthusiasm but to her birthplace of a French colonial island in the Indian Ocean, is the nineteen-year-old wife of the wealthy industrialist Colonel Delmare, a crusty, callous retired soldier old enough to be her father, who has a nice country house in Brie. The marriage was arranged, of course, and Indiana is miserable practically to the point of physical illness. That her dog is named Ophelia seems to emphasize the general despair the novel has for the feminine state.

There are two other important men in Indiana's life. One is her cousin Sir Ralph, an English baronet, who, trying to overcome a past filled with heartbreak, is protective of her but makes a valiant effort to remain friendly with her imperious husband. The other man is an impetuous Lothario named Raymon de Ramiere who infiltrates the Delmare household by seducing Indiana's beautiful Creole maid Noun and then Indiana herself. Charismatic, accustomed to adoration, Raymon is one of the most histrionic lovers in literature ("If only I could wash away with my blood the shame that I have left on this bed!"), almost comical in the intensity of his passions.

Given this woman and the three men who love her, it is clear that jealousy will be the strongest factor in driving the story; but the plot develops in unexpected ways, almost to the extent of a romantic fantasy that defies Sand's supposedly "realist" intentions. However, it is interesting that she allows the various political upheavals of France at the time, coinciding with the burgeoning Industrial Revolution reflected by references to Delmare's factory, to fuel the characters' motivations; they are not just acting in a vacuum that obliviously seals itself from the outside world.

Despite its aesthetic qualities, "Indiana" would have problems attracting a modern readership. Sylvia Raphael's English translation, as rich and garish as the icing on a decorated cake, seems naturally to evoke the novel's peculiar tone, that of the kind of antiquated melodrama that a parodist of period romances might try to achieve. And yet, assuming that the novel's style is largely defined by the mores and tastes of the French society of the 1830s, I can't help but commend Sand's intellect and craftsmanship in exploring the different meanings of love.

La Marquise - Book and Two Audio Compact Discs

Average customer rating:

La Marquise - Book and Two Audio Compact Discs
George Sand
Manufacturer: French & European Pubns
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio CD

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ASIN: 0320066355

Average customer rating:

Fadette
George Sand
Manufacturer: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000F1RHAA

Product Description

This is the 1897 first American edition. It is a 4 1/4" x 6" hardback. The cover is part gilt leaf scroll design, and part multi-color pictorial floral design. 237 pages

Horace (Mercury House Neglected Literary Classics)

Average customer rating:

Not light fare, but well worth it
One of George Sand's best books...

Horace (Mercury House Neglected Literary Classics)
George Sand
Manufacturer: Mercury House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Marianne
Indiana (Oxford World's Classics)
The Black City
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The Devil's Pool

ASIN: 156279082X

Book Description

The first English-language edition of a major work by George Sand. Translated by the winner of the 1994 BOMC-PEN Translation Award. "A courageous work, nowadays unjustly neglected". -- Renee Winegarten "Sand develops her most advanced political, social and sexual views in this classic work". -- Feminist Bookstore News

Customer Reviews:

Not light fare, but well worth it.......2004-12-06

This is the first George Sand book I have read. I was curious about her after watching the movie "Impromptu". It was a bit of a quest to get my hands on one of her books--possibly this would not have been my first choice. Either way, I found it very interesting.

It is hard to grasp the revolutionary nature of some of the ideas she has in this book--i.e. equality of women from a modern view point. Of course much of what she is saying and observing is still quite relevant in many ways. And she has a marvelous way of saying what she does. It makes me wish I could read French well enough to read it in the original.

It was a great example of first person narrative, and Horace certainly is a character unlike any other I have encountered in a book. Eugenie is a marvelous woman as well.

One of George Sand's best books..........1999-10-11

This is a truly fantastic book. It is written in George Sand's fourth period of creativity and emphasizes on what it means to be a man. G. Sand stresses on the qualities of human nature, but she does not criticize them on the surface. She shows what would happen if people accept them.

It is worth reading for anyone who feels they do not know what they want to do with their lives!

Iron-Tail,
Average customer rating:
Iron-Tail,
George X Sand
Manufacturer: Scribner
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

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ASIN: B0006DYQQ0

The Devil's Pool
Average customer rating:

A seemingly uninteresting subject, and a beautiful story...

What would I think of myself ....

The Devil's Pool
George Sand
Manufacturer: Paperbackshop.Co.UK Ltd - Echo Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Book Description

Yes, my son," said she, "this is the Devil's Pool. It is an evil spot, and you must not approach it without throwing in three stones with your left hand, while you cross yourself with the right. That drives away the spirits. Otherwise trouble comes to those who go around it.

Download Description

Yes, my son, said she, "this is the Devil's Pool. It is an evil spot, and you must not approach it without throwing in three stones with your left hand, while you cross yourself with the right. That drives away the spirits. Otherwise trouble comes to those who go around it."

Customer Reviews:

A seemingly uninteresting subject, and a beautiful story... .......2006-02-17

George Sand (1804-1876) was an excellent writer, and this book allows the reader to be certain of that. How? Well, in this book Sand takes a seemingly uninteresting subject and tells us a beautiful story about him.

"The devil's pool" (1846) is short, and it is likely to seem even shorter due to the fact that you will be caught up in the pastoral world that the author describes so well. The plot is simple, but effective, and revolves around a planned marriage, and love. However, I am certain you will also enjoy her beautiful metaphors, that for example make you wish you were able to watch a particular sunset.

All in all, I think that the lesson here is that there is poetry and beauty in everything, we just need to be capable of seeing it, as Sand did. Recommended!

Belen Alcat

What would I think of myself ...........2005-06-13

..... if I couldn't fight off my sad thoughts? (p 48)
I had a vague knowledge of George Sand before I read Belinda Jack's biography of her. In learning more about Sand I grew to admire the determined individual that she was. But I never really felt any liking for her - unlike, say, what I feel for Emma Goldman or Mary Shelley. Sand's novel 'Indiana' did excite me despite some of its melodramatic aspects. 'Mauprat' on the other hand, wasn't to my liking much at all. 'The Devil's Pool', however, is such a short novel - a novella really - that I was willing to give it a try. And I am so glad I did.

This is a simple pastoral novel, but Victoria Glendinning's Foreword mislead me. I thought I was about to enter the rural world of W H Hudson ('A Shepherd's Life' or 'Idle Days in Patagonia'), which was not a bad prospect for me as I enjoy Hudson's writing a lot. But Sand is different altogether - this rural environment is gripping and tinged with horror and despair.

Here's another quote:
'..... everyone has a story (and everyone would be able to rouse interest in the novel of their own life, if they had really understood it.....)(p 15)

Other recommended reading:
'George Sand': Belinda Jack
'Indiana': George Sand
'Living my Life': Emma Goldman (she must have really understood it!)
'A Crystal Age': W H Hudson (for a different type of pastoral world, but just as challenging)

Story of My Life: The Autobiography of George Sand (Women Writers in Translation)

Average customer rating:

not a masterpiece

Story of My Life: The Autobiography of George Sand (Women Writers in Translation)
George Sand
Manufacturer: State University of New York Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Customer Reviews:

not a masterpiece.......2000-04-12

Ever since having watched Impromptu with Hugh Grant, I have wanted to read this book. I read Indiana, which I didn't like a lot, but Sand's autobiography is a great story that one enjoys reading. Swings of her mood, her independence, her love for men. It's great, although it's not a masterpiece of literature. But maybe it's better in French. If you want to know about her life, read the book, but don't expect Hugh Grant in there. As far as I've read, the movie is much more interesting.

Average customer rating:

Really good.
French literature at its best
On love, life, business, and the Industrial Revolution
This is a good read.
Absolutely Great Book

The Black City
George Sand
Manufacturer: Carroll & Graf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0786713240

Book Description

Set against the backdrop of France's industrial revolution, this 1859 novel by the controversial, passionately socialist George Sand follows the fortunes of the dynamic, young metal smith Etienne Lavoute, known as Sept-Epees (or Seven Blades), as he strives to free himself not from the working class but from the woes imposed upon it by grasping mill owners. While ambition is the spur that prompts Sept-Epees to purchase a ramshackle factory he is ill equipped to run, love is the secret cause. For Sept-Epees, however misguidedly, would make himself worthy of the orphaned (like him), wise, pretty, and capable Tonine Gaucher. As eloquent in its exposure of the social ills that afflicted French workers at the onset of the industrial revolution as it is poignant in its exploration of love's turbulent course for the prideful Sept-Epees and the proud Tonine, The Black City reflects George Sand's enduring admiration for the struggles and triumphs of the working class as well as her genius in the characterization of strong, clear-eyed, independent women. If in Sept-Epees she embodies the estimable worker who can make of his craft an art, in Tonine she epitomizes the woman whose successes stunningly defy the conventions of the age.

Customer Reviews:

Really good........2006-02-27

It took me a few chapters to get into this book (possibly because I was reading it as I was falling asleep) However, once I was in the midst of it, I just sat down and finished it off. The characters are really appealing and interesting, and also very human. With a very few descriptive words I know these people that Sand has created, I can see them very clearly and imagine every detail that she doesn't give us.
It isn't a very long story, though it takes place over a couple of years, and the cast of characters is very small. Sept-Epees is our hero and Tonine the heroine, they are a very interesting and powerfully drawn pair. Sept-Epees at first has a burning ambition to prove there are better things in life for him and invests all of his time and money in a money-pit of a factory (What it produces we never find out, but it is ultimately not importatnt) This ambition drives him further and further away from what everyone else (including the reader) know as his real happiness, Tonine.

The complexity of the plot that Sand manages to created with relatively few characters or incidences is amazing and very tantalizing. I would reccomend this book to anyone who was looking for something along the lines of Dickens but with a little more sunshine.

French literature at its best.......2004-06-16

If you like Victor Hugo, Emile Zola, or Gustave Flaubert, you will love George Sand. Many people have heard her name but much of her work has never been translated into English, so she is largely unread in the United States. Do yourself a favor and buy this book. The story seems fairly simple on the surface, but it has layers of meaning and truth that will strike you. The love story is very real and beautifully crafted, and the book's hero and heroine would not be out of place in the twenty-first century. I enjoyed every page of this book. You will, too! It's a must-own!

On love, life, business, and the Industrial Revolution.......2004-03-08

This short, fast paced novel, artfully translated by Kover, is as much a social commentary on life during the Industrial Revolution as it is a story of true love. The plot is engaging, the characters are convincing, and the story culminates in an inspiring twist. A pleasure to read, The Black City will surely strike a familiar chord with every entrepreneur, aspiring business owner, or anyone who has ever yearned for something more in life. I highly recommend reading it!

This is a good read........2003-09-09

I really liked it. It's a good story that everyone can relate to in some way. This book made me want to read more by George Sand. It's the perfect book to curl up with on a rainy afternoon!

Absolutely Great Book.......2003-06-17

This is one of the best translations I've ever read, and it is so nice to have another of George Sand's works available in English. The story is surprisingly modern, very readable, with really appealing, human, simple characters. If you've heard of Sand but never read anything of hers, start with this book!

Average customer rating:

Valentine
George Sand
Manufacturer: Paperbackshop.Co.UK Ltd - Echo Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Average customer rating:

The Essence of Love

La Petite Fadette
George Sand
Manufacturer: Pocket (FR)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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ASIN: 2266089404

Customer Reviews:

The Essence of Love.......2000-08-12

When I was a young boy, this book was my most favorite. I read it again and again with a touching feeling. This main theme is a characteristic love of little Fadette. The story turns over at certain pivotal plot, which is composed of the conversation between her and her boyfriend at the quiet riverside in the woods. Her speaking is excellent despite of her surface. Her kind conclusion causes the deep sympathy resembling the love. Rather, the theme of her speaking might be the love itself.

Later, I have begun to think of this motif as the essence of the Christianity. A lady in the Old Testament tells that she cannot estimate the figure of her lover as other girls do, because she doesn't love him for its sake, but love his invisible things like his heart.

I have learned the spiritual love from this novel. I'd advise the young people to read it.

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Authors

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