Bette is a wronged soul; and when her passion does break, it is, as Balzac says, sublime and terrifying, wrote V. S. Pritchett. A late masterpiece in Balzac’s La Comédie Humaine, Cousin Bette is the story of a Vosges peasant who rebels against her scornful upper-class relatives, skillfully turning their selfish obsessions against them. The novel exemplifies what Henry James described as Balzac’s huge, all-compassing, all-desiring, all-devouring love of reality. | Cousin Bette by Honoré de Balzac, Paperback | Indigo Chapters