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Madame Bovary  By  cover art

Madame Bovary

By: Gustave Flaubert
Narrated by: Fiona Glascott
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Publisher's summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

This Penguin Classic is performed by Fiona Glascott, star of Brooklyn, and Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald. This definitive recording includes an introduction by Geoffrey Wall.

Emma Bovary is beautiful and bored, trapped in her marriage to a mediocre doctor and stifled by the banality of provincial life. An ardent reader of sentimental novels, she longs for passion and seeks escape in fantasies of high romance, in voracious spending and, eventually, in adultery. But even her affairs bring her disappointment and the consequences are devastating. Flaubert's erotically charged and psychologically acute portrayal of Emma Bovary caused a moral outcry on its publication in 1857. It was deemed so lifelike that many women claimed they were the model for his heroine; but Flaubert insisted: 'Madame Bovary, c'est moi'.

Public Domain (P)2019 Penguin Audio

What listeners say about Madame Bovary

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Irritating French pronunciation

This is Flaubert’s greatest work, but I couldn’t enjoy it because of the way the reader paused before every French word of any length, then launched into an exaggerated pronunciation, clearing her throat on the “r”s - especially Rodolphe- (instead of making a gentle gurgle) and then being careless with how the vowels were pronounced, sometimes pronouncing using English pronunciation, e.g. “fricassEE” instead of “fricassay”. It drove me nuts.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

A relevant classic

Is a classic even a classic if it isn’t still relevant? Loved the story. This reading of it made is extremely easy to switch back and forth from audio to reading the physical print.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Graceful narrative

I really began to think that in person, Madame Bovary is a good person. I would like to know her. Her friends and family are also endearing.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

A powerful story

The reader is hard to hear. The story of course is an historical classic that demands more than one listen.

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