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Title: Not quite unmitigated, but a disaster nonetheless.
Review: Painfully overwritten, with passages of eye-roll-worthy bombast that make one shudder at the thought of ever having to hold a conversation with Brown. The assiduous research the author clearly carried out is, alas, rather poorly edited, and then rendered into passages of the most torturous purple prose.Flaubert is indeed a fascinating figure; and Brown does not *totally* fail in communicating this. However, for all the technical acumen this biographer is blessed with, he is woefully lacking in grace. Don't come looking for the deft brevity of a skilled historian, but rather for a farrago of murky narrative and hack psychoanalysis reflecting the masturbatory garrulity of a writer blindly infatuated with their own talent.If you buy it, buy it used. I think someone's selling it for $0.88.
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