Père Goriot by Honoré de Balzac (1835)

I am going all in on the 19th century French classic novels this year and I started with Balzac. I am sad to say that while I have watched more than one movie in which Balzac is a featured character, this is my first actual novel. The good news is that I loved it, and am eager to spend more time reading works in his La Comédie Humaine. This story centers on one young man from France’s provinces, Eugène de Rastignac, who has just settled in Paris and set his sights on becoming a lawyer. He desires to climb the social ladder fast and his impatience for money, status and power soon makes him cross paths with one impoverished father of two daughters (old Goriot) who selflessly devotes his remaining time to them (or, more accurately, to the memory of them). From richly-decorated Parisian drawing-rooms to the bedlam that reigns in a poverty-stricken lodging house, the result of this crossing of the paths is a thrilling head-to-head collision of reality and illusion, youth and old age, ruthless selfishness and selfless devotion, all happening at the very heart of turbulent and exploitative Paris of 1819.