The Works of Guy De Maupassant, Vol. 5: Une Vie and Other Stories
The Works of Guy De Maupassant, Vol. 5: Une Vie and Other Stories
Maupassant writes with a scalpel, not a pen. In this fifth volume, readers encounter his devastating novel "A Woman's Life," the story of Jeanne, a young woman who leaves the convent dreaming of love and happiness, only to find her illusions shattered by a brutal marriage, financial ruin, and the petty cruelties of provincial French society. It is naturalist fiction at its most pitiless: Maupassant offers no redemption, no tidy moral, only the slow grinding of idealism against reality. The additional stories in this collection, including "Hautot Senior and Hautot Junior" and "Little Louise Roque," demonstrate his range in miniature: ghostly tales, bitter comedies, and studies of obsession and folly. What unites them all is Maupassant's unsentimental eye for the gap between what life promises and what it delivers.
