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The Puzzle of the Parrot

© Diana Adams

I sit up with attention whenever Julian Barnes steps out to speak about the great French master of literature, Gustave Flaubert. France has become an adopted country for Barnes, he admits that the history and culture have inspired and cultivated his own talent as a novelist. When Barnes speaks on the subject of Flaubert he does so with a deft touch that brings the writer to life to the reader. Barnes' novel Flaubert's Parrot is an artistic exploration of the life and work of Gustave Flaubert.

Instead of writing straight biography, Julian Barnes wrote a unique novel that combines elements of fiction, literary criticism, and literary biography. The result, Flaubert's Parrot, is a fine medley of information and story that transcends the ordinary boundaries of fiction. There is no doubt that Gustave Flaubert can only be an interesting subject. Flaubert was an artist of mad intensity and lived a sort of reclusive rebellion to his times. His novel Madame Bovary, written in 1851, was the first novel to portray extramarital affairs in a frank and open manner. The novel sparked such huge moral outrage that in 1857 Flaubert was actually sent to trial. Crushed by the reaction to his novel, Flaubert lived a bitter and lonely life. Strangely enough this rebel of his own century lived with his mother. Time has proved, however, that Madame Bovary was in fact a precursor and pioneer of the modern novel, putting Flaubert the artist well ahead of his time.

Now, about that parrot... Flaubert's Parrot has drawn considerable attention because it also includes a bit of a mystery. The narrator of the novel, Geoffrey Braithwaite, is in search of a parrot. Not just any parrot, of course, but the stuffed parrot that sat on Gustave Flaubert's desk while he wrote Un Coeur Simple. In Flaubert's novel the main character Felicite ascribes god-like powers to her pet parrot, somehow Flaubert is able to pull of this piece of literature without generating a hint of smirk from its readers this in itself a testament to his powers as a writer. While our narrator bounces from museum to archive trying to find the authentic parrot in Rouen France, he imparts a great deal of information about the life, loves, and obsessions of Flaubert.

As our narrator tries to solve the puzzle of the parrot, the reader slowly comes to understand that Geoffrey Braithwaite is a man of obsession himself, with an almost pathological focus on his Flaubert. Halfway through the book, the reader comes to understand that poor Geoffrey's wife has recently died by suicide, and the narrator is focusing on Flaubert as a way to deal with his emotions.

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