Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

I read it when I was about 14. I didn't care for it. The style bogged me down and I was impatient with her character. Maybe I should re-read it as an adult.

I read this in High School and I think I remember liking it. but I may be mixing it up with The Magician of Lublin, which I also read near the same time. is this the one where he keeps his wife in a stone enclosure?
maybe I should read it again..I still have it.

It is without question one of the great novels of all time, and a historic development in fiction writing. It also never appealed to me, despite several attempts to read it, thus joining novels by Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Thomas Hardy and Henry James and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Which makes a point: Novels can be judged great without particular individuals, like me, actually enjoying them. There are plenty of novels universally adjudged as "great" that I have greatly enjoyed reading, such as Lord Jim. Huck Finn, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Lord of the Flies, Light in August, Ethan Frome, The Count of Monte Cristo. Having a personal distaste or disinterest in a particular book is not a valid reason for judging it as "crap".

caw

I hated it, but I have zero patience with self-absorbed characters, especially when they commit suicide. Guess how I feel about 75% of Shakespeare?

DamaNegra said:

And no, PH, you're confusing it with some other book.

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guess I gotta read it again then

The only thing I have against Emma is the way she neglected her kid. I would have been rather wild if I'd had to live a life as dull as hers. Love this book, though. Love it!

I didn't like the book. Emma annoyed me to no end. Characters have to have some redeeming quality for me to enjoy a book, and Emma didn't. For me anyway. Lame. I didn't feel sorry for her and how she ended up

just had to resurrect this to say I finally reread the book. I think now that maybe I skimmed the thing in high school.
It was a good read, I was impressed at how well the author nailed her feelings of boredom and her desire to live another life, especially being written by a man from another century. I too was bothered by the way the child seemed an afterthought..but I wonder if that was a more standard attitude of the times? Some parts got a bit tedious and redundant, but overall I can see why this book has remained a decent read for so long.

It was so boring

I had to read this in French, which was traumatic, but when I revisited it in English I liked it more. This was the one quote I saved:

Car tout bourgeois, dans l'échauffement de sa jeunesse, ne fût-ce qu'un jour, une minute, s'est cru capable d'immenses passions, de hautes entreprises. Le plus médiocre libertin a rêvé des sultanes ; chaque notaire porte en soi les débris d'un poète.

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And in English:

For every bourgeois, in the heat of youth, if only for a day, for a minute, has believed himself capable of immense passions, of heroic enterprises. The most mediocre libertine has dreamed of oriental princesses; every notary carries about inside him the debris of a poet.

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It is a pretty funny book but it drags on a bit.