Catch A Parisian Affair Compiled By Guy De Maupassant Volume

first experience of Maupassant and this is, by all accounts, a wellchosen selection, I have generally eschewed short stories throughout my life as a reader but have enjoyed a few collections of late so to turn to the reputed master of the art was a natural step.
The tales in this book are satisfying indeed a real snapshot of Belle Époque France and while Paris is to the fore, there are other stories that take place the length and breadth of the country, including Corsica, Provence and Normandy.
The narrative considered to be Maupassants masterpiece, Boule de Suif kicks things off and is by far the longest story in the book, a satisfying burlesque set against the serious business of the FrancoPrussian war, also memorably captured in print by Maupassants friend and contemporary, Émile Zola.
Love looms large across the book and there is a raciness that is surprising for a nineteenth century work a tale of hedonism amid the boating fraternity of the Seine, unacknowledged children and lesbianism do cast into quite a stuffy light some of the literature that appeared across the Channel during the same period Hardy, late George Eliot although perhaps not quite matching the dastardliness of the Russians.
Guy De Maupassant is the father of the short story, Honestly every story is a work of art and perfected,
I only give this three because the subject matter was pretty repetitive and I'm so bored of reading nineteenth century stories where women are just objects.

Not giving any spoilers, but I recommend reading The Necklace, I thought that story was brilliant, I really enjoy how strangely modern Guy de Maupassant's stories are the subject matter can be quite risqué at times, which feels really fresh given he was writing in thes.
There is a lot of levity to his stories, but also a fair amount of darkness that lurks behind some of them, particularly the ones he was writing later in his career while struggling with his own health issues.
Some of the stories didn't really hit, but there were many that had me laughing or shocked, and many that fully pulled me into their world.
I'd thoroughly recommend this to anyone who is a fan of short stories but maybe hasn't tried any classics yet.
Ah Maupassant. How I can never bore of you, A magnificent collection indeed. Guy de Maupassant is the best storyteller of theth century France, . . This particular edition has the most entertaining short stories, each capable of delivering as strong a message on moral and profoundly nonsocietal ethics, as remarkably tothepoint images of an average French bourgeois or an average French peasant.
The heroes are complex, decorated with their subjective and objectified environments: they fall in and out of love, abandon and adopt children.
. . unpunished thieves, unfaithful servants, families enatngled in inheritance dispairs, . . His pen is so powerful that story after story lives succumb in theatrical precision so benign and materialistic, yet lively and at times, even lovable.


Being one of the best literary classics and appreciated in his lifetime and eternally after, Guy de Maupassant seemingly detested the societal formalities.
He remained a shrewd observer althrough his journey from one story to the other and led a comparably humble life.
Known for finding the Eiffel tower a most abhorrent addition to Paris, he analogically led an observer's life from a decent enough pedestal.
Albeit his expressed dislike of the Tower, he'd nevertheless go there every day for his morning coffee for "it's the only place whence I cannot see it".
True to his natural longing for an absolute fairness, he wrote of lives merely looking at them and never living one himself.


For all the above reasons, by all means, definitely get a copy of this book and enjoy the read through laughs and tears.
Acknowledgements
Chronology
Introduction
Further Reading
Translator's Note

Boule de Suif
A Parisian Affair
A Woman's Confession
Cockcrow
Moonlight
At Sea
A Million
Femme Fatale
Monsieur Jocaste
Two Friends
Awakening
The Jewels
Train Story
Regret
Minor Tragedy
The Christening
Coward
Rose
Idyll
Mother Sauvage
Madame Husson's Rose King
Encounter
Happiness
A Bit of the Other
Love
Hautot amp Son
New Year's Gift
The Horla
Duchoux
The Lullabye
Mother of Invention
Who Knows
Laid to Rest
The Necklace

Notes I'm in love with a dead French writer.
Maupassant toujours! Some great little stories centres around nasty Prussians, tarts and creeping lunacy, If this had been written in Victorian England the Establishment would have had kittens, For me Guy de Maupassant is the greatest of short story writers, Here is a review of the title story in this collection,

For my reviews of some of the other stories read them here:

sitelink wordpress. com

A Parisian Affair is a very short, slight story about boredom in marriage and unexplored desires which eat away at someone.


An unnamed woman creates an excuse to escape from her boring solicitor husband to Paris.
The city is presented as a seductive animal beckoning her, the centre for intrigue and sex, orgies abound, a chance to mix with and meet exciting people.


Whilst perusing the shops she meets Jean Varin a famous writer, She goes for a

drink with him, followed by a meal and then onto the theatre where he introduces her to his wide circle of friends.
“This is it, This is it!”, she thinks as she is meeting people, she has finally made it in Paris.


She cajoles him into taking her back to his flat and sleeping with her, but they are completely incompatible in their love making, it being as bad as being with her husband.
She wakes the next morning and surveys Varin, he is fat with a belly like a hot air balloon, bald with just a few strands of hair covering his head, he snores like a pipe organ and has saliva dripping from the corner of his mouth while he sleeps.
She is appalled this is not the exciting, cosmopolitan life style she dreamed of,

She makes her excuses and leaves, Here for me is the crux of the story:

Larmée des balayeurs balayait, Ils balayaient les trottoirs, les pavés, poussant toutes les ordures au ruisseau, Du même mouvement régulier, dun mouvement de faucheurs dans les prairies, ils repoussaient les boues en demicercle devant eux et, de rue en rue, elle les retrouvait comme des pantins montés, marchant automatiquement avec un ressort pareil.


Et il lui semblait quen elle aussi on venait de balayer quelque chose, de pousser au ruisseau, à légout, ses rêves surexcités.


“She felt as though something inside her, too, had been swept away, Through the mud, down to the gutter and finally into the sewer had gone all the refuse of her overexcited imagination.
”

A great image of street cleaners like reapers in a field mechanically sweeping filth and refuse into the sewers just like her dreams.
It feels like Maupassant has punished the woman for her foolish behaviour and the morning after is not sweetness, light and love but filth.


Maybe a warning for the “I want to be famous” generation, I first came across Guy de Maupassant in high school, when we read his delightful, Grated for a de Maupassant story The Necklace.
Interesting to note how some of the stories in this collection share the same backgrounder: low to midlevel clerk marries ambitious beauty, marriage is usually childless, expect surprises at the end.
The rest of the stories are very French, so I'm left with the impression that these stories encapsulate what to me embodies, but not necessarily defines, the French short story: aristocracy and snobbery, slighted honor and ensuing duels, marital indiscretions by both men and women.
And amour. De Maupassant does love best, be it among humans or animals, The stories which merited a heart from me were Happiness, which reveals the joys and pleasures felt only by the heart, and Love, a short tale about a duck hunt, leaving me with a visual of one of the most bittersweet endings in short stories.


And speaking of endings, some tales here left me with the impression how it would have been more powerful to leave out the last paragraph.
Happiness is one example. While that one last paragraph doesn't diminish the impact of the ending, it reads like it was written as an afterthought, more like a footnote.
On another noteand this coming from a reader whose stories of choice are shortI found some stories, such as A Parisian Affair, so engaging, with the main character so thoroughly threshed out in so few words, that I realized, I would have wanted to stretch the story out into a novel, or a novella, at least.


All considered, however, this has been a very enjoyable read, and I wish I could get my hands on more of de Maupassant's stories.
Get a copy. Read it. Je vous en prie. because of the clasp by sloane crosley If you only read one de Maupassant, make it this.
Sublime. Chekov quality short stories perhaps not as depressing, Maupassant's short stories are captivating!! His style of writing is exquisite and engaging! A most pleasurable French classic reading experience is a cert when cracking open a Maupassant.
This selection ofshorts from Flauberts protégé titillates, amuses, and shocks in a mild manner, leading with the fabulous Boule De Suif, a brilliant skewering of the hypocritical aristocracy of the period, followed by the titular tale, where a wife learns of the underratedness of tawdry adultery, followed by a spectacular range of stories exploring madness, cuckoldry, the value of wealth, and umpteen moral dilemmas, explored in the sublime manner only such fiction of the period can offer.
People from all walks of life appear in theseacutely observed tales of love, passion, revenge, and the supernatural.
Expect the unexpected.

A collection of tempting bonbons, one of the best being, . . a suet ball! Here is a taste of Boule de suif:
The respectable people all keep together very respectably in the coach travelling from Prussian occupied Rouen to Dieppe through a snow storm, keeping well apart from "The woman, one of those usually known as a goodtime girl, was famous for the premature portliness which had earned her the nickname Boule de Suif.
". But let's carefully consider everyone's behaviour when things do not go according to plan, . .
:
:
Heres the aftermath: "The two nuns, taking up the long rosaries that hung from their belts, made a simultaneous sign of the cross.
Suddenly their lips began to move at an everincreasing speed as if competing in some salve regina steeplechase.
”

""Boule de Suif: 'Dumpling, Dimples, Butterball, Lardycake, etc, Literally a ball of fat, suet or tallow, ".