The Dream Lover: A Novel of George Sand

by Elizabeth Berg      

      

            Elizabeth Berg’s newest book is a fictionalized story of the life of George Sand. Told in first person narrative, the story documents a woman who was perhaps the most unconventional person in her day.  This is a fabulous book, classic Elizabeth Berg.

            I confess to not knowing anything about George Sand before reading Berg’s novel. Born Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin in 1797 in Paris, her parents were a French lieutenant from the aristocracy and his courtesan lover whom he married. This unusual beginning for the young Aurore, as she was called, was to set the tone for her entire life. While Aurone/Sands did marry and have children, she also left her husband, built a successful career as a writer and sued her husband to get her fortune back. She wore men’s clothing, smoked in public and took multiple lovers without apology. A truly gifted writer, Sands was a woman who was centuries ahead of her time in advocating for women’s rights.

It is Berg’s ability to bring this complicated and unorthodox woman to life that makes this novel shine. This is a huge, luscious novel to be read slowly and savored.  

Victor Hugo said this about George Sands upon her death: “George Sand was an “idea.” She has been released from the flesh, and now is free. She is dead, and now is living.”

In The Dream Lover, Elizabeth Berg has indeed set Sands free and she is once again living.

Scheduled for publication on April 7^th, this is a book to buy, read and then read again.

Disclaimer: I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.