I had a hard time getting into Eugenie Grandet and it has to have been because of the pages and pages of description of the house, without Balzac introducing any character, let alone presenting dialog.
I later understood why this Balzac is so insistent on pages of description (or at least got to see one of the advantages of this literary strategy). When Charles first comes to the Grandet house on that such fateful of nights, the contrast between his Parisian aristocratic lifestyle and the Saumaurian lifestyle is so utterly stark. While reading the description of each exquisite piece of finery owned by Charles, I understood why the narrator had previously described in equal detail the drabness of that empty, cold country house. The contrast was painful, visceral. It literally hurt my stomach when Charles wakes up "early" (around 11A.M.) and comes to breakfast asking for "anything, a pheasant, a bird," not knowing that his "modest" request would serve to be the finest banquet for his country hosts. Truly heartbreaking.
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