Madame Bovary

"The only word I can say to describe reading this novel: "laborious" However, in the end, I guess I'm glad I read it. Only if so now I can say that I have."

"The most boring book on the planet, took me more tries than I can count to actually finish it."

"One of those great works of art about the human condition that you appreciate more and more as you get older. Someone described it as “the search for transcendence “ and I couldn’t agree more. Fantastic novel with one of my favourite quotes of all time- “Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.” "

"Sometimes classics really are just as wonderful as everyone says. Emma is a thoroughly believable , contemporary character; I can picture her sighing over glossy spreads in <i>House Beautiful</i> and <i>Vogue</i> at the checkout counter, while her Instagram feed churns forth tawdry celebrity news and romance novellas. What surprised me was the focus on materialism and debt as opposed to the infamous adultery. Unlike say [b:Anna Karenina|15823480|Anna Karenina|Leo Tolstoy|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1546091617s/15823480.jpg|2507928], there is no pretense of Emma's affairs being about "love" rather than vanity, self gratification and ego.<br/><br/>Like other great observational writers, (Austen, Dickens, Tolstoy, Proust) Flaubert excelled at depicting the pettiness of small minded characters with a few well chosen words: the illustrious doctor "who practiced virtue without believing in it" the "notary who carried about inside him the debris of a poet". A didactic priest is mortally offended by Leon's lack of interest in his tour guide services: " an individual, who had the audacity to admire the cathedral unassisted. Such behavior he regarded as quite monstrous, a species of theft , and little short of sacrilege".<br/><br/>Though not a comic writer, Flaubert was not above the occasional ironic barb. After convincing her gullible husband of her urgent need for weekly, out of town "piano lessons" to cover her adultery, the narrator observes, "People even said after just a month that she had made considerable progress".<br/><br/>Flaubert is hard on Emma, but not completely unsympathetic, pointing out her quiet rage at life never turning out the way she had expected, ("This is the sort of living room I should have had") and her frustrations at the limits of feminine experience. Pregnant, she longs for a son, "and this idea of having a male child was like an anticipated revenge for the powerlessness of her past. A man at least is free; he can explore each passion and every kingdom, conquer obstacles, feast upon the most exotic pleasures. But a woman is continually thwarted. Both inert and yielding, against her are ranged the weakness of the flesh and the inequity of the law. her will, like the veil strung to her bonnet, flutters in every breeze; always there is the desire urging, always the convention restraining".<br/><br/>Of course, not all men, notably her plodding husband "explore each passion and conquer obstacles", but she's correct that they at least have opportunities for fulfillment and escape which she is denied. Her first lover Rodolphe can simply decamp when she becomes an annoyance, her second Leon, buries himself in his career, his affair with Emma seen as youthful wild oats.<br/><br/>Yet there will be no such escape for Emma. In the devastating conclusion, as the priest gives her the last rites, he anoints, "first upon the eyes, which had so coveted worldly splendours, then upon the nostrils, so greedy for warm breezes and amorous perfumes; then upon the mouth, which had uttered lying words, which had groaned with pride and cried out in lustfulness; then upon her hands, which had found delight in sensual touches, and finally upon the soles of her feet, so swift ere now in running towards the satisfactions of her desires, but now would walk no more."<br/><br/>Damn."

"i loved the beginning but she’s just… so written by a man."