“Six North Africans” (12) are playing boules beneath a statue of Gustave Flaubert in Rouen. The narrator, Geoffrey Braithwaite, laments the statue’s impermanence while he considers the writer’s legacy and “unwritten books” (14). Geoffrey is a widowed doctor travelling around Rouen, Caen, and the nearby beaches, observing the relics of the Second World War while studying Flaubert. Geoffrey tours streets named after the writer and museums dedicated to him. In a museum, he encounters a stuffed parrot which sat on Flaubert’s desk while he wrote Un Coeur Simple. The parrot has an effect on Geoffrey, leaving him “moved and cheered” (17). It reminds him of Flaubert’s extraordinary talent and his “control of tone” (18). Geoffrey recounts the “four principal encounters between the novelist and a member of the parrot family” (19): one owned by a sea captain, one found sick in Antibes, one speaking from inside a gilt cage in Venice, and an annoying bird which repeated annoying phrases when Flaubert was lodging in Trouville.

Geoffrey drives to Croisset in the rain. He passes Flaubert’s homes, one of which has been torn down and replaced, first by a grain alcohol factory and then by a paper mill.