The Dream Lover

The Dream Lover: A Novel of George Sand by Elizabeth Berg

To be published: March 31, 2015

 

George Sand was way ahead of her time. The book starts out on the day Aurore (Sand’s real name) decided to leave her home in the French Countryside and her husband Casimir and try her luck at becoming a real novelist in Paris. It is a trial separation from her husband, and the story goes on to explain how she came to this point by jumping back and forth between her birth and after her move to Paris. She starts writing for a journal magazine when she is publishing her first couple of books and relying on her husband for income, to becoming totally independent with her own money and a string of lovers, both male and female. She starts dressing and acting like a man and eventually takes the pen name, George Sand. George is friends with writer Victor Hugo, artist Eugene Delacroix and composer Franz Liszt. She most famously tries to court the famous French actress Marie Dorval, composer Frederic Chopin and writers Alfred de Musset and Gustave Flaubert. 3 stars.

 I have always been fascinated with George Sand, but never knew anything about her. So when I saw this historical fiction, I jumped at the chance to read about her. My biggest gripe about this book was the length. The book started off interesting, but then got really tedious. It was if the author was turning the book into an academic nonfiction instead of a historical fiction. It became another one of those Advanced Readers Copies that I was sloughing through, having to review because I promised to, instead of because I was enjoying it.

Overall, I really enjoyed the story and she was an intriguing character both in her personal and professional life, a woman who didn’t take no for an answer in an age when women always took the backseat and did whatever their husbands told them to do. I never knew that she had children and it was cool that her son got to apprentice with Eugene Delacroix, the Romantic French painter so famous for paintings like Liberty Leading the People (28th July 1830), and later became a writer in his own right. George was also very political, even starting her own political journal and supporting worker’s rights. She led a pretty sad life with her father and brother dying young, her mother abandoning her, her tempetuous relationship with her grandmother, and her horrible relationship with her husband. It seems like she never really found happiness in love, but only in the her books. I would like read some of her own writing and would pick either Lelia, Indiana, or Consuela.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of the book from the author, in exchange for my honest review.