Probably one of Balzac’s most romantic and idealistic novels, telling a story of true love, assumed identity, and psychological tension. There are some interesting and well-developed supporting characters in here, as is usual for Balzac, including the dwarf and the poet. Not quite one of his best, but distinctive for its brighter tone and happy ending. ( )

Typical romantic comedy devices at play here, although in Balzac's inimitable style: Poor girl falls for wrong guy, right guy pretends to be wrong guy, dwarf intervenes, poor girl becomes rich girl, wrong guy and other wrong guy compete with right guy for her hand, dwarf intervenes. Not the kind of story I normally gravitate to, but Balzac makes it enjoyable enough. ( )

AG-1

Modeste is a classic case of that 19th century obsession, the young woman who has read too many novels and poems. Her father, who has left her at home in Le Havre while he goes to Asia to try to rescue the finances of his shipping business, has left strict instructions with his business partner to keep an eye on her and make sure she doesn't get involved with an unsuitable man. Nonetheless, she manages to send off a clandestine fan-letter to Canalis, the popular romantic poet of the moment, and she soon finds herself engaged in a torrid correspondence in the best Bettina Brentano tradition (her correspondent actually cites Bettina as an example of why you shouldn't send unsolicited letters to poets: "If I were Bettina, I would never have become Frau von Arnim," she replies, sniffily). However, it isn't Canalis who is replying to her letters at all, but his much less romantic friend and secretary, Ernest de La Brière, to whom the cynical poet has passed this umpteenth fan-letter from a provincial unknown. A sure recipe for chaos, exacerbated when Modeste's identity is revealed just at the moment when there are rumours that her father is coming back from Asia with cargoes worth millions: it's not long before she has not one but three suitors sniffing around her door...

Balzac wrote this book after a lengthy stay in St Petersburg with the great love of his life, Ewelina Hańska, who seems to have been the inspiration for the central character, and perhaps that explains the unusually sunny mood - probably about as near as Balzac ever gets to being Jane Austen(!). Much like Northanger Abbey, it manages to satirise romantic plot conventions whilst staying (almost) entirely within the framework of what's permissible in a bourgeois romance. Although there's a certain amount of interest paid to the shipping trade and the provincial life of Le Havre, it is all quite sketchy, and Balzac never really seems to have captured the mood of the town in the sort of way he characterises Angoulême in Lost illusions. The main interest of the book, outside the plot itself, is in Balzac's magnificently offhand critiques of the greats of Romantic literature.

Entertaining social comedy, but probably not top-rate Balzac. ( )