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Review of 'Red and the Black' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

I'd heard a lot of good things about [a:Stendahl|4406434|Stendahl|http://www.goodreads.com/images/nophoto/nophoto-U-50x66.jpg], but after dutifully slogging my way through 80% of [b:The Red and the Black|14662|The Red and the Black|Stendhal|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1311645389s/14662.jpg|1028281], I gave up on trying to enjoy it. He's been called a master of psychological insight and depiction, but to me all of his characters were two-dimensional machiavellian caricatures, and Stendahl's "insight" seemed no better than the pathologically intense anthropology of an alienated psychotic. The book is a flat farce with some social commentary that was I'm sure daring and pointed in the time and place of Charles X, but is mostly only of historical interest today.