Phew. That was an extremely long ride.

I tried very hard to find a reason why I should give this book at least 3 stars, but unfortunately it did not happen. I never thought I would dislike a novel just because it was too long; I always felt that length was a very superficial and silly reason to base a judgement on a book, and I never understood readers who complained about it. Now I can see that so far I have been fortunate enough to meet only greatly written tomes, where you don't even notice how long they are while reading them. This is not the case with Consuelo by George Sand.

This book - perhaps following the era's hip tradition - is practically an essay novel; the story itself is almost merely a reason for Sand to write (really) long passages on the meaning of art, religion, history, whatnot. These parts usually manifest themselves as lengthy monologues by one of the characters (generally one of the main ones), and they go on and on and on for multiple pages. Quite often they enunciate these extensive essays out of nowhere, with no connection to the story and the events whatsoever, frequently interrupting the narrative. (At one point, we, the readers have to crawl through a gazillion pages of the history of the Hussite movement and the Bohemian Reformation, and in the end the 'presenter' asks his listener, the heroine, 'I hope I haven't bored you too much'; at which point I started to scream, 'Oh, yes, you son-of-a-b...., you have, you have!') Added to this, the actual content of these parts, the thoughts and ideas they convey are very dated and incredibly naive (naive as in 'silly').

If all this weren't enough to throw the book down, George Sand's writing style would surely make you do so. Her bombastic rants are essentially unbearable to read through without rolling your eyes or laughing out loudly (and not with delight, let me assure you). To say that she is melodramatically sentimental, is a strong, strong understatement.

That said, the story itself would not be too bad (hence my 2 stars and not just one), and in spite of the completely idiotic and silly heroine you do want to know (up to a certain point) what is happening to her and her environment; but in order to learn that you need to chew down 800+ exhausting, tedious and tiresome pages. If an editor cut out at least third (or more) of the novel, and just leave the story line, this book would be a decent read. In this form though, it is on its well-deserved way to become a forgotten classic.

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Consuelo along with La Comtesse de Rudolstadt are among my favourite nineteen century novels. It's George Sand's masterpiece and bizarrely they were the books she wrote in the worst of times, always on the run, always on deadline. Writing in the dead of night, after all the visitors were asleep, sitting in her little cupboard, writing, writing until 4 am, sending the pages barely edited to Paris from Nohant to be published in the paper. Consuelo started out as a novel about music, opera and Venice. It gives the reader a wonderful view of the time, the people who had power and how a diva was made. But it went sideways because Sand needed money, because she was an amazingly curious writer and she became enamoured with Bohemia, its history, its legends. And Consuelo took a turn for the gothic and dramatic with her lead character on the road with a very young Haydn finding refuge in a very mysterious castle.

There's a star cross love story, a dramatic ending, a wonderful, wonderful female lead, a mysterious, gothic lead male character full of angst, music, mysticism all mixed to form an operatic kinda novel.

I still love it to pieces.

Just arrived from France through BM.

This book starts as a "nouvelle venitienne" where Consuelo is good to singing. After that, the author changes the scenery to a castle in Boheme, then to Vienna (at the relevant time when Haydn debuted) and then to Berlin under the reign of Frederic.

This huge book was written as a serial book and sometimes we loose track on the main story.

This sequel is La Comtesse de Rudolstadt.