The November choice for the Read the Classics Book Group, this one generated lots of discussion. Goriot was one novel in the collection of loosely interconnected works that Balzac entitled The Human Comedy, which, if Wikipedia can be believed, contained 91 completed works including novels, stories, and novellas. They concern the state of French society at the time of the Bourbon Restoration, after the fall and exile of Napoleon.
Father Goriot lives in a dingy Paris boardinghouse, where he is mocked by his fellow residents for being the poorest among them and for his fanatical love for his high-society daughters. The reader meets the handsome young law student Rastignac, who lives at the same address and who falls in love with one of Goriot's daughters. Frequently humorous, but a bleak portrayal of human nature, vicious and petty.
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