Peter Brooks
Mr. Barnes hasn't written this novel directly or simply. Rather, he has appropriately given us the story of an obsession with Flaubert. The result is a splendid hybrid of a novel, part biography, part fiction, part literary criticism, the whole carried off with great bio. Flaubert's Parrot' is high literary entertainment. -- New York Times
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt
"Witty and dazzeling!" -- The New York Times
From the Publisher
A high literary entertainment carried off with great brio.... rich in parody and parrotry, full of insight and wit ... a great success.” —The New York Times Book Review
AudioFile
With his customary grace and dry British wit, Simon Vance matches the tone and tenor of this decidedly erudite and playfully imaginative literary biography…Sounding like a gentleman holding court in his drawing room, Vance introduces listeners to Flaubert’s life…the way a good biography should sound. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.”
AUGUST 2014 - AudioFile
Richard Morant is the perfect narrator for this unusual and much loved early work by Julian Barnes. The novel, if novel it is, is told in the voice of a rather crabby English widower, a doctor named Geoffrey Braithwaite, who has become obsessed with Flaubert, his memory and his legacy, and especially with which of two possible stuffed parrots is the one Flaubert kept on his desk as he wrote a story featuring a parrot. The accent of an educated Englishman is essential for Braithwaite, as is a well-polished French accent, and Morant has both. But most important is his skill in making the text lively, in inhabiting Braithwaite’s obsessive inner world with interest and attention. A most welcome addition to Barnes’s audio oeuvre. B.G. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine
