Pierre et Jean / The Heritage and other tales by Guy de Maupassant (1888)

This volume contains the two title pieces which are short novels and a small selection of short stories. Both Pierre et Jean and The Heritage are better than usual Maupassant, because they don't deal exclusively or even terribly strongly with his worst subject - love, or, more accurately, "love". His people are still very much exemplars of the worst of humanity, though. They are selfish, blank, thoughtless creatures, obsessed or stupid. One could hardly call them uplifting. In Pierre et Jean two very dissimilar brothers, always needled a little by one another, come to disunion through one of them being left a substantial legacy by a family friend, and the other being ignored. Suddenly, the 'losing' brother takes a new look at his sibling, thinks about how fundamentally different he is, takes the pointed legacy into consideration, and comes to the conclusion that their father is not actually that for his brother, rather that the fortune was a sign of the leaver's paternity. This causes terrible conflict for the realising brother and his mother, as his view of her is completely changed. How that conflict works its way through them and their family is the meat of this novel. The Heritage is the story of a clerk in a government department who marries his daughter off to an ambitious fellow-scribe. Each of the betrothed is kidding themselves about how interested they are in the other, and their less-than-delightful humanity begins to show through. When a wealthy aunt dies, and leaves them her money, she places a stipulation that it be dependent on their having a child. They try and try mercenarily but it doesn't happen. This delightful pair then play a game of 'avoid the truth' with one another while hating each other and his manhood being called into question by her father and his fellow clerks. She 'befriends' a rival clerk; he ignores it desperately; she gets pregnant. Thus their solution is provided. There are shards of humour in The Heritage which lift it, and tension is rich in both novels, saving them a little from the author's grim vision.