Search - Eugenie Grandet (Penguin Classics)

In this 1834 novel the love of money – getting it out of others, tracking its ebb and flow – drives the village miser Grandet. His obsession with wealth damages the lives of everybody around him. His daughter, the title character, is too sweet and inexperienced for our scheming world. She falls in love with her rotten cousin Charles, who, lucky for her, does not know she is an heiress. Also ironic is that her futile love for this cad will be the only high spirits she will feel in this life. I recommend this novel. Short, not given to Balzac’s lengthy descriptions of settings and his incessant butting in with commentary on the action. This would be a reasonable start for somebody who wants to test Balzac’s shallows, before the depths of, say, "Père Goriot."