From high hopes to disillusionment (Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert)

Name: Alternum

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Product:	Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
Date:	01/08/00 (35 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Apparently a literary classic; some excellent characterisations

Disadvantages: Fairly predictable plot

On the face of it, this looks like being a really good read. The cover (I read the Oxford World's Classics edition) tells the reader how the book is a landmark of world literature; how it marked a great shift in French literature; etc, etc. So you set about it with high hopes.

The book tells the story of Emma Bovary, a country doctor's wife who becomes increasingly disillusioned and bored with her life and her husband. She seeks escape in a series of adulterous affairs, into which she increasingly throws all her energies, neglecting everything else about her. Lawyer's clerk Léon, the dashing and rich Rodolphe - she has no thought for pursuing anything but the ideals of love that have existed in her mind since childhood. But she is destined to.. well, I won't spoil it; but it's fairly predictable.

The problem I found was always that there seemed to be something missing. The book runs smoothly enough, albeit with a pretty predictable plot; the descriptive passages are evocative and the characterisations vivid. But always there seems to be something missing. Perhaps it is the lack of real surprises; perhaps it is the high hopes of the first paragraph not being realised; but I was left strangely flat at the end. If you like this sort of book, then read it; but if you are looking for something new and different, as I was, then try something else.

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