Madame Bovary

By: Gustave Flaubert, Lydia Davis - translator

Narrated by: Kate Reading

Length: 13 hrs and 45 mins

Publisher's summary

Now a major motion picture starring Mia Wasikowska, Paul Giamatti, Laura Carmichael, Ezra Miller, and Rhys Ifans, and directed by Sophie Barthes.

Emma Bovary is the original desperate housewife. Beautiful but bored, she is married to the provincial doctor Charles Bovary yet harbors dreams of an elegant and passionate life. Escaping into sentimental novels, she finds her fantasies dashed by the tedium of her days. Motherhood proves to be a burden; religion is only a brief distraction. In an effort to make her life everything she believes it should be, she spends lavishly on clothes and on her home and embarks on two disappointing affairs. Soon heartbroken and crippled by debts, Emma takes drastic action with tragic consequences for her husband and daughter.

When published in 1857, Madame Bovary was deemed so lifelike that many women claimed they were the model for its heroine. Today the novel is considered the first masterpiece of realist fiction. In this landmark translation, Lydia Davis honors the nuances and particulars of a style that has long beguiled readers of French, giving new life in English to the book that redefined the novel as an art form.

Public Domain (P)2010 Penguin Audio

Slow and Steady

This was a book chosen for our book club, as a classic.
I found it mildy interesting, and didn't have trouble listening to it, but I took nothing away either. It seemed to move very slowly, without the content to really grab my attention.
I finished it more out of duty than desire.
The reader was excellent, and it was thus that I was able to continue at a trot.

Superb descriptive writing

now I know why this work inspired generations of writers internationally and initiated the school of Realism in literature. The meticulous description of details makes it possible to imaginatively see, hear, touch, and smell what is in the scene, while the metaphorical comparisons add depth and surprise. Since the translation is recent, one would have expected better, but it is rather disappointing. Nevertheless, Flaubert's exquisite style comes through and awes the reader in every chapter.

Tedious

The reading was done beautifully, but the book...ugh. A teacup is read that I’m glad I never had to read back in school. I wanted to like it so much, but not a single character was sympathetic. Emma I found sniveling and weak, even in moments where she seemed to be asserting herself. (SPOILER ALERT: In choosing to engage in extramarital affairs, and eventually in taking her own life, the inherent power of her choice didn’t even give her character strength; rather, it made her seem even more pathetic to me as the world around her unfolded.) And Charles — really, could not a single character in this story warrant a little sympathy? I just couldn’t muster it up.

Not my favorite translation.

Any additional comments?

I have loved this book for years without the appreciation of how, when or whom translated it from french to english. Lydia Davis does give a modern translation that perhaps will appeal to young adults. I love the humor and eloquent descriptive writing from the Eleanor Marx Aveling translation that seems to be lacking in this version. The first translation into english. 1886.
Before deciding you hate this book, try Eleanor's translation.