Not a page-turner, but competently researched and written. It's always questionable when an author presumes to convey the thoughts & feelings of a famous person without quoting that person's words--either written or spoken. The result in this case is a George Sand who is never really likeable or sympathetic. ( )

Read 4.2024 and left in Slovenia

I think a lot of the interest in this boom comes from the way the timeline is woven together with bits from the distant past supporting a ongoing narrative of our narrators present. Sand as she is presented by our author is a deeply flawed but ultimately sympathetic lead. It's a bit implausible as a work of historical fiction but nevertheless enjoyable. ( )

I won my copy of this book through a Goodreads giveaway.

This was an interesting novel, based on the true story of the life of the author George Sand. Set in the early-mid 1800's this book does try to portray that era accurately, and Berg does a reasonable job at keeping modern language and attitudes out of her book, mostly. Still, I didn't feel like I was shadowing the mind of a woman from the 1830's-40's in reading this story (which is told from George Sand's perspective, alternating between her childhood and adulthood and progressing forward in time on both tracks). It felt more like a modern woman interpreting the attitudes of that era and acting, as in a stage drama. The story itself is engaging enough that it doesn't matter too much, but it was easy to forget that the story was in the 1800's. (I kept imagining more of an 1890's-1920's range while reading this book.)
I suppose the structure of this book, alternating between earlier and later parts of Sand's timeline, kept the story moving, but it got distracting toward the middle of the book. It was hard to stay immersed in the story with the timeline jumping back and forth so much.
Otherwise, this was a pretty good novel, and it seems to have been well researched. It is still clearly fiction, but a lot of factual information on George Sand is worked into the story, so you do learn quite a bit about the real person, even though this is not a straight biography. ( )

How this book could be as boring as it was is beyond me.

The protagonist is an interesting person - - author and poet, George Sand, a woman who was distinctly ahead of her time. Sand's life was very, very interesting - - involving affairs and break ups with a number of famous artists (Chopin being the most notable), dressing as a man, being deeply in love with a female actress, and a turbulent relationship with her daughter. So Berg gets five stars for her choice of subject matter.

Too bad she then rendered this tale in absolutely the most boring way possible. The narration does everything in its power to hold the reader at arm's length. Heaven forbid, Berg should try to bring a scene to life. She does no such thing. She merely narrates. I have a boring relative who goes on and on about people I don't know and I don't care about in a blow by blow manner, and that's EXACTLY how this book is presented.

To make an already terrible narrative worse, the author flips back and forth in time for absolutely no reason. This is someone's life story. It's linear. Nothing is served by going between her childhood and her adulthood chapter by chapter other than to break up the dullness of the childhood tale.

Literally, this book is almost all about Sand's love affairs. Which are oddly repetitive. A lot of her lovers are sickly artists. None of them ever come to life under Berg's pen. Honestly, Sand just comes across as fairly selfish and slutty as opposed to a cutting edge feminist paving the way for women to live lives that are true to themselves.

I really toyed with giving this book a single star, but I've read worse things. It's not completely garbage - - I at least learned something about George Sand.

The irony is at the end, the author writes a two page afterward that is more interesting than the entire book. She has a pleasant, natural writing style that if only she had applied it the the first 340 pages, I might have liked this book a whole lot better. ( )