Customer Reviews

Madame Bovary (Collector's Library)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Skip this. Footnotes in the middle of pages with no source reference in the page. Use of obscure terms (form for bench), choppy uneven language. I compared this to another paper edition I own. The translation is poor at best. Sometimes you do get exactly what you pay for.

The entire story is colorful an keeps the reader interested until the end. Vivid and an enchanting journey into the mind of a women stranded into a world buried in average housewife chores, and married to a man who she maybe does not truly love. The ending leaves the reader to think long after the author's words stopped.

Having originally read MADAME BOVARY in French, I am bound to find English versions disappointing, though, over the years, I have twice read acceptable translations. From Amazon, I bought the General Books paperback, and I cannot comprehend how Marx Aveling could allow it to appear for sale, especially after her adoring Flaubert prologue. The publisher scanned her copy without proofing it, and there are so many typos it's virtually unreadable.
The language is as forced and artificial as Flaubert's is natural and true. He created such marvelous characters that they manage to struggle through this mess and touch the reader. But I implore people not to read this genius author in this disgrace of a book. - Ann Seymour

Rich in language with a compelling plot and memorable characters, Madame Bovery harkens back to a time when writing was an art and readers needed literature to depict their world and to define the inner workings of human nature. A must read for the discerning reader.

The aforementioned footnotes didn't bother me too much, but there are quite a few odd word choices and blatant transpositions in the text. Not enough to ruin the reading experience, but enough to make you go "huh?" at least once a chapter (i.e. a pony "gambling" in the pasture instead of "gamboling") especially if you are unused to older translations with archaic usages.

That being said, this was my first experience with the book and I felt like I got all of the author's intention from it - the word choices aren't lazy, just old-fashioned. And when all's said and done, isn't that the important thing?

Throughout the entire book I kept thinking I didn't like it, but looking back on it I liked it. It is a slow read. I would recommend this to people who like Classic Literature.

Basically this book follows the gradual decline of a woman, dragging down everyone else with her.

Ah, Madame Bovary - I have always found Emma Bovary a surprisingly unsympathetic commoner, given the rather grand sounding title of her book. Well, perhaps "commoner" is too harsh a term - Emma herself would most likely argue with me for my use of it, but "bourgeoisie" just doesn't translate all that well in a single word. Regardless, Emma's quiet desperation and her pathetic attempt to cure the boredom of her married life with a racy extramarital affair don't exactly endear her to me - and this definitely would be true regardless of my stance on/in regard to marriage! Despite the fact that I usually can't enjoy a book if I don't like the main character, I must admit that I really like this book. Perhaps Flaubert, in some fabulous French way, is the exception that proves my personal rule. His writing style is easy to follow and draws you in even against your will. You may not sympathize with Emma (I never have), but you will nonetheless find yourself curiously captivated to see what kind of ridiculous decision she will make next.

This is one of those classics that you may want to allude to whenever you encounter the needy woman character who is never satisfied. It's depressing and she is annoying but it's a good book to have read at least once.

I can only imagine that for its time "Madame Bovary" must have been quite the shocking novel, dealing with the topics of adultery and religion, and I can appreciate the stir it must have caused.

That being said I had a hard time reading the book and it took me quite a while to finish it. Some parts of the book started off very interesting and then seemed to just drag on, add to that the fact that there was nothing about Emma Bovary that I liked. She was a spoiled, self indulgent, mean person and I think if she lived today would have been diagnosed with some type of mood disorder. It always seemed like nothing was ever good enough for her and she liked to manipulate situations. I actually felt very bad for her husband, and could not understand why he loved her so much. The saddest thing about the whole story though seems to be that the only person who really seemed to suffer was Berthe, I hope she finds happiness in her life.

I first read Madame Bovary as an undergraduate with a dictionary to hand, which was no doubt very good for my French, but rendered the experience rather less enjoyable than it might have been. It was a tough read.
How happy I would have been to be able to cheat and read Bovary in Adam Thorpe's new translation, published in 2011 in a fine clothbound edition by Vintage Classics. Adam Thorpe is both a poet and a novelist, whose first novel Ulverton is a modern classic. His Bovary is a labour of love and turns out to be a triumph.
Emma is a bored young country woman with romantic longings married to a dull country doctor in a small market town in Normandy. In her desperate search for passion and luxurious living, Emma has two extramarital affairs, but her lovers soon tire and abandon her. She is left penniless and thinks of suicide as a final grand gesture. She takes arsenic and dies an unromantic death in agony. By the end of the novel, her grieving husband has been bankrupted by her expensive tastes and her hapless daughter made homeless and reduced from gentility to a mill-worker.
Romantic ideas are all very well in fiction, but in everyday life they seldom work out. Yet we all understand Bovary's need to dream of a way of life that transcends her humdrum reality. It's impossible not to identify with Bovary.
Gustave Flaubert is recognised as one of the great French stylists, his vocabulary was vast and rich, he loved words and word play. His search for le mot juste is legendary. With extraordinary literary skill, Thorpe has chosen to pitch his style and vocabulary to the English prose of the late 19th century period. No modern anachronisms, no false notes. No attempt to "update" the language for modern readers. Yet this is done so unobtrusively that the prose never feels retro or archaic. In the view of this reader, Thorpe's Bovary is destined to become the definitive translation of this wonderful work.