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I picked this up solely because it was by Elizabeth Berg - I have loved everything else I've read by her. But unfortunately this one did not live up to expectation.
A historical fictional biography on George Sand, this book did, at least, teach me a lot. I had heard of George Sand but had never read anything by her - and, in fact, did not even know it was a "her". Forced to adopt a male's name to get published, she eventually adopted it in life too, even going so far as to dress in men's clothing most of the time as well. This was also fascinating in that George Sand was friends (and lovers!) with so many famous authors, artists and composers - and as a viola player, it was the composers I found most interesting (Chopin, Lizst, etc.).
George seemed to have lived a very interesting life surrounded by very interesting people, but somehow it got lost in translation. For starters, the author decided for the first 2/3 of the book to have every other chapter switch between George's childhood and adulthood. Which was ok at first, but once it got to the point of switching between early adulthood and later adulthood it got very confusing and disconcerting. Then, once I finally got used to that - paying very close attention to the chapter header dates and comparing them to the previous chapter - the author stopped doing it and the last 1/3 of the book was in chronological order. It would have been much smoother if it was just all in order. I never saw a point to switching back and forth. Plus, the first 2/3 of the chapters tended to be very close in succession, going month-to-month, and then suddenly nearing the end it began to skip huge amounts of time. It really bothered me that a chapter might be titled "May 17, 1866" and then within a few paragraphs skip 15 years! What was the point of having an exact date as the chapter header if most of the chapter happens much later? It gave the impression that there just wasn't as much information about George's later years, so they author just skimmed over it.
Then, I oftentimes found the insertion of actual quotes from Sand to be jarring. It reminded me of reading a high school's first ever research paper: they have these quotes that they have to get in there somehow, but they just don't quite flow right. I also think part of the problem was that "George" was written in first person but in the voice of the author, and then suddenly there were quotes in her true, real-life voice, that just didn't quite match.
Next, there were so many peripheral characters that often were dropped and sometimes reappeared at random. George clearly had a life-long relationship with Marie Duval, but she disappeared halfway through the book without a mention and then only reappeared at the very end. Other famous artists were implied to have very close relationships with George, but never really got fleshed out as characters. Dozens of chapters early were devoted to George's first on-again-off-again love affair which truly didn't last very long, but then much later in the book a relationship of 15 years was glossed over in two paragraphs. It seemed like that was probably her longest relationship, that she finally did find true love, and we heard nothing about it! It seemed that there were so many people to get through, that the author crammed them all in "a mile wide and an inch deep" rather than really getting to know the best or most important ones.
Lastly, it seemed that the author forgot halfway through that George Sand was an author too. Early on, it mentioned each one of Sand's titles and when and where she was working on writing them, but about halfway through the book Sand's works stopped getting mentioned. And she wrote her entire life! She has a long list of works that were never incorporated into this story. I completely understand that there truly isn't time or space to include them all, but the titles selected for inclusion should have been more spaced out through time - not just the first 5 or so Sand wrote get mentioned and nothing else.
/end rant.
