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"Abstain, and Hide your Life": the hidden narrator of Flaubert's Parrot.(Critical Essay)

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From: CRITIQUE: Studies in Contemporary Fiction
Date: 20040922
Author:Cox, Emma

Julian Barnes's Flaubert's Parrot is told from the first-person viewpoint of Geoffrey Braithwaite, a retired doctor. Ostensibly, the novel is Braithwaite's account of his meticulous research on Gustave Flaubert. Like any first-person narrator's, his account of other characters in the novel is colored by personal bias; indeed, it reveals as much about Braithwaite as about the characters concerned. As we read the novel, it becomes apparent that Braithwaite's interest in Flaubert is intimately related to traumas in his own personal life--in particular, to the adultery and suicide of ...

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