"Balzac's Lives is, among other things, an attempt to rectify the benign neglect from which Balzac currently suffers. Brooks's book is not about any one work, or even any one theme. It is about the human dimension of the vast Balzacian universe. . . . A literary study that reads like a novel and whose unabashed aim is to get its readers to read more Balzac once they've finished." --Elena Comay del Junco, Los Angeles Review of Books

"Peter Brooks's entire body of work has been devoted to finding a way of talking about literature that is analytically rigorous but lucid, eloquent, 'useful' (one of his favorite words), and--in the best sense--social. Balzac's Lives is the brilliant culmination of his approach. I found this world-besotted book--especially now, self-quarantined as we are--immensely moving." --David Shields

"Anyone interested in Balzac should pounce on this book, at once erudite and wonderfully readable, and keep it close at hand. Peter Brooks displays in these pages a dizzying knowledge of his work. Through the life of various characters, he leads the reader towards an unusual biography of the novelist for whom the world he invented was more real than life. It takes a steady hand to guide one into Balzac's vast and complicated world and make sense of a passionate and complex man. Peter Brooks provides it with ease and elegance." --Anka Muhlstein

"As I read the book, I enjoyed Brooks's sharp insights, which suggest the ways in which Balzac's proto-modern world is not so different from our own. But I also felt a more basic, visceral pleasure." --Naomi Fry, The New Yorker