Madame Bovary (Oxford World's Classics)

You know I really like this book, in the beginning it was a little slow within the first part, but I understand that that’s just you know character building and them laying out the setting and scenery. I will say that because it was so slow and my mind works the way that it works, I ended up looking up Chapter summaries for the first part because I was just a little confused and I wanted some clarity. Once I got that clarity it was smooth sailing throughout the rest of the book. I ate it up. I really really enjoy the character development of Madame Bovary. I felt like she Was a vessel to channel what many many many women felt at that time and what many many many people feel today and all the desires that we have and the conventionally proper things to do and what happens when we don’t follow the conventions of society when we’re just looking for ourselves and we’re looking for what makes us feel good in this life. Now her literally doing what she did in the name of finances is so funny to me like it wasn’t funny in the story I understand it’s a very serious thing, but it is so hilarious when I think about it in context to what that would’ve looked like today. I don’t know. I really really enjoyed the book.

Madame Bovary is one of those rare books that changes the way you look at literature and, perhaps, at life. It is not a consoling or escapist read; it is a totalizing, uncomfortable, necessary aesthetic and intellectual experience. The 4 stars are not a rating, but an acknowledgment: we are faced with one of the absolute peaks of the art of narrative. A novel perfect in its crudeness and in its bitter, unsurpassable beauty.

I loved this novel, the language, the story. However, Madame Bovary's ennui was contagious and I found myself drifting off every now and then. And it wasn't her boring husband that got to me, it was her incessant need to be entertained in a manner and treated above her station as a member of the bourgeoisie. I found her ambition off putting and sad.

At times I felt myself pitying certain characters, annoyed at others, but M. Flaubert knows how to weave a good story and kept me engaged enough to finish the novel.