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This is an interesting collection of stories. As the Translator's Preface says, "These three short stories by Flaubert are unlike anyone else's, and they are also unlike much of his own work, for another reason than their shortness." I admit I was hoping for something that I would call more 'Flaubert-like,' and the prose is the best of it.
The first story is called A Simple Heart and is most like what I anticipated. "Madam Aubain's servant Félicité was the envy of the ladies of Pont-l'Évêque for half a century." Thus begins the telling of a servant whose heart was generous.
It is followed by The Legend of St. Julian the Hospitaller. This is more of a fable and takes place during the middle ages.
The final story is called Herodias and takes place in Biblical times. In fact it incorporates the story of John the Baptist after he was imprisoned by King Herod.
The first story is called A Simple Heart and is most like what I anticipated. "Madam Aubain's servant Félicité was the envy of the ladies of Pont-l'Évêque for half a century." Thus begins the telling of a servant whose heart was generous.
It is followed by The Legend of St. Julian the Hospitaller. This is more of a fable and takes place during the middle ages.
The final story is called Herodias and takes place in Biblical times. In fact it incorporates the story of John the Baptist after he was imprisoned by King Herod.
Before daybreak one morning the Tetrarch Herod Antipas came out to lean on it and look round him.
The mountains immediately under his eyes were beginning to unveil their crests, while their main bulk was still in shadow to the bottom of the chasms. A mist was floating; it parted, and the contours of the Dead Sea appeared. The dawn, rising behind Machærus, spread a glow of red. Soon it lit up the sands on the beach, the hills, the desert, and, still further, the mountains of Judea, and steepened their grey, knotted surfaces.
