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Wednesday, August 12, 2015

The Romances of George Sand by Anna Faktorovich



The Romances of George Sand: take the heroine from a childhood in the aristocracy amidst the Napoleonic Wars, to an unhappy early marriage and eventual divorce, to her careers as a country doctor, a pharmacist, a lawyer, and most successfully as a romance novelist. This is a story about the revolutions in a woman’s heart as she goes through dozens of love affairs. It is also about George’s involvement in violent, political revolutions of her time, including the July and June Revolutions and the 1848 Revolution; in the latter, she served as the unofficial Minister of Propaganda. The story is full of military battles, coup d’etat maneuvers, duels, malevolent plots, infidelity, artistic discussions, monumental legal cases, and reflections on the nature of love, family, romance, rebellion, and femininity. The history behind each of the events depicted is researched with biographical precision, but liberty is taken with some events that have been contested by historians, including the lesbian affair George had with Marie Dorval and the identity of the real father of her second child. Students of literature and history will recognize many of the names of the central characters, as George had close personal encounters with Napoleon I and III, Alexander Dumas pere and fils, Frederic Chopin, Alfred de Musset, and a long list of other notable figures.

Book Readers Review 

The Romances of George Sand documents the life and affairs of George Sand during the Napoleonic Wars.  George is a female who had a variety of careers, the most notable and successful, as a romance novelist. Sand's life is interesting from her exploits and is an educational read. She was considered a child prodigy with insight into the human condition at an early age.  Although the book is well researched it reads much like a narrative or an academic non-fiction.
I found the novel a little difficult to read and scanned pages many times until I found something that interested me.  The book is not one I would choose to read for pleasure.  I received an ARC copy from the author in exchange for an honest review.  In my opinion the novel is a well written, academic treatise.  The novel would appeal to readers interested in the period and place in history.  For those readers who enjoy history, I recommend the book and give it a 3 star rating.  Thank you Anna for the opportunity to read and review your work.



Anna Faktorovich is the Director and Founder of the Anaphora Literary Press. She taught college English for three years before focusing entirely on publishing. She has a PhD in English Literature. She published two scholarly books: Rebellion as Genre in the Novels of Scott, Dickens and Stevenson (McFarland, 2013) and The Formulas of Popular Fiction: Elements of Fantasy, Science Fiction, Romance, Religious and Mystery Novels (McFarland, 2014). She completed two other scholarly books, in which academic presses have expressed strong interest: Gender Bias in Mystery and Romance Novel Publishing: Mimicking Masculinity and Femininity and Wendell Berry’s New Agrarianism and Beyond, for which she received a Kentucky Historical Society fellowship. She previously won the MLA Bibliography and the Brown University Military Collection fellowships. She also published two poetry collections Improvisational Arguments (Fomite Press, 2011) and Battle for Athens (Anaphora, 2012), and a children’s book The Sloths and I (Anaphora, 2013).
Paperback: $20: Order with Amazon, Barnes and Nobleor ShopLocket, 13 GBP, 15 EUR, 22 CAD, 23 AUD, ISBN: 978-1-937536-68-8
Kindle EBook: $2.99: Order on Amazon, ISBN: 978-1-937536-78-7
Smashwords Edition: $2.99: ISBN: 9781937536701

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