Over the years... still a great book

books:


	• Madame Bovary (Oxford World's Classics) Gustave Flaubert Oxford University Press, USA, 2005 - 358 pages average customer review:based on 196 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

Interesting story!

I enjoyed this book...the story really showed how a snotty rich girl retaliates, to be as concise as possible. I do think the story was a bit longer than it needed to be. Also this version has REALLY small print, which is annoying (even for really healthy eyes). All in all, I would recommend it. It's like chick lit takes on socioeconomic status issues.

Humanity Captured in Prose

Like so many of the classics, Madame Bovary does an incredible job of recording humanity. All of the characters are whole, full-fleshed and individual. Emma's discontent with life, her yearning for something more, has probably been experienced by all of us. Her yearning destroys her, and her husband, but teaches us about ourselves along the way. The reason I love this book, and many of the other classics, is that the characters don't always have reasons, they think and behave erratically, sometimes logically, sometimes foolishly, just like real people.

for more information click here

Wow, what a prescient novel

This is a very well written novel. It deserves its high status in the cannon of world literature. The most unique and surprising thing about this novel is that it seems to be so timely and modern. Though it was written long before our consumer driven culture of debt, it seems to understand these issues is a weirdly foretelling way. I was an English literature major in college so I was exposed to many fiction works from the time period of Madame Bovary, but I have never read such a modern novel from that time. Maybe Flaubert had a time machine?

Over the years... still a great book

Emma is a typical unrealistic romantic girl, who sees love as the solution to all her problems and the answer to all her dreams of wealth and fame. Emma finds married life and attending expensive parties as the doctor's wife very disappointing. She compares herself to the wealthy people at these parties and becomes very depressed and angry at her husband for not fulfilling her dreams of wealth and fame. Emma becomes the center of the story when she begins her adulterous love affairs in an attempt to bring passion, romance and fulfillment to her empty life. At the end, faced with the emptiness of her fantasies, Emma, makes a tragic decision still hoping for a romantic ending, but that goes badly as well

Even motherhood was disappointing for Emma, as she had hoped for a boy but gave birth to a girl Many of Emma's actions were compulsive in every way and her interaction with her little girl was obviously cruel and selfish.
Emma couldn't see the reality of any person in her life; she over estimated the passion of her lovers, even the sexual attraction between her and Rodolph got cold, even the pleasure of overspending money didn't last. Her husband and child, the only people true to her, were in front of her all of her life but she didn't see it. Was the reason again the hunter/prey nature of human beings? If Charles didn't give her unconditional love, would she not notice his love like she did? If she wasn't that cruel, would Charles idolize her like he did? Are the people who live their lives unnoticed like Charels destined to be like that for the rest of their lives? If Charles had known the true Emma from the beginning, wouldn't he still love her as much and do whatever she wanted to please her?

I don't know about all the emotional conflicts of human beings, but I know that Flaubert was an artist who presented his obnoxious character Emma in a fascinating and very readable way..
Eight years ago, and again recently, I was unable to put the book down until I finished reading it..

for more information click here

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

One of the acknowledged masterpieces of 19th century realism, Madame Bovary is revered by writers and readers around the world, a mandatory stop on any pilgrimage through modern literature. Flaubert's legendary style, his intense care over the selection of words and the shaping of sentences, his unmatched ability to convey a mental world through the careful selection of telling details, shine on every page of this marvelous work. Now the award-winning translator Margaret Mauldon has produced a modern translation of this classic novel, one that perfectly captures the tone that makes Flaubert's style so distinct and admired.
Madame Bovary scandalized its readers when it was first published in 1857. And the story itself remains as fresh today as when it was first written, a work that remains unsurpassed in its unveiling of character and society. It tells the tragic story of the romantic but empty-headed Emma Rouault. When Emma marries Charles Bovary, she imagines she will pass into the life of luxury and passion that she reads about in sentimental novels and women's magazines. But Charles is an ordinary country doctor, and provincial life is very different from the romantic excitement for which she yearns. In her quest to realize her dreams she takes a lover, Rodolphe, and begins a devastating spiral into deceit and despair. And Flaubert captures every step of this catastrophe with sharp-eyed detail and a wonderfully subtle understanding of human emotions.
Malcolm Bowie, a leading authority on French literature, explores Flaubert's genius in his masterly introduction to this must-have book for all lovers of great literature.

for more information click here

hot