It mirrors, rather than paints, mobile and revealing glimpses of life as it was whiled away in the climate of fear and greedy drawing-room conformity that followed Waterloo. Julien Sorel, the novel's restless, ambitious hero, rebels against his circumstances and wills himself to make something of his life by adopting a code of hypocrisy. On the road to the surprising crime he commits (out of passion, principle or insanity), he turns into Stendhal's greatest and most completely human creation.
Oddly enough, I think most of the fault I found with it was the translation (Margaret Shaw's "Scarlet and Black" by Penguin, 1953); I was two chapters from the end when I found another copy I had stowed away, and in those two chapters felt more for the characters than I had the whole of the other book. Otherwise my comments were this: Julien is an asshole. Now I'm reading it again, and he's still an asshole, but at least a more fleshed out, less ingratiating one. Stendhal knew what he was doing; don't mess with the man's words.
Reading updates
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12 March, 2009:
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12 March, 2009:
Reviewed