Flaubert's Parrot is about a Flaubert scholar in search of an obscure object in the French author's life (as of Feb 2006, he does not have his WikiPedia entry, what?). The stuffed parrot in question was used for the novel "Un Coeur Simple". The obsession with Flaubert apparently has to do with the narrator's wife's suicide and his attempt to make sense of it (I only got that from reading the backjacket, the work pretty much went over my head)

It turns out to be extremely pedantic, or too literary. The references make me dizzy. When it's good, it reads like excellent groundwork for a biography. When it's bad it's a bunch of jibberish. I find it unecessary for this to have a narrator, as in an additional character. There's very little prosaic progression, why didn't Barnes just use the first person or himself?

I guess there was one paragraph about the pointlessness of short stories on deserted island I found quite witty (that and the conversation with Ed Winterton in chapter 3)

This novel like Lolita assumes the reader is familiar with French

Very disappointed in picking up this book, it had a lot of positive reviews. Sole quality: it's short (but not short enough). I had high hopes for this as an introduction to the Barnes' work before getting Arthur & George

My edition is actually a UK one, £2.95

Cover
the chain doesn't make sense to me, the bird can slide out to the right

Quotes
"you can only do one thing well"
"isn't it the most reliable form of pressure, Flaubert implies, the pleasure of anticipation"
"you are chosen; you are elected into love by a secret ballot against which there is no appeal"