Madame Bovary took me by surprise!

[eBagger]

Wow, it took a little while to get started, but now about 60 pgs into it, the book is starting to shine.

At first it seemed as though Flaubert was making up for a mediocre story with great use of language, but now I'm starting to see this is like one giant poem, with the words chosen just as carefully. Its more exciting reading the sentence structure and seeing how creative he can get than the story itself for the most part, but now I see he is not using the story as a mere excuse to show his amazing writing ability, but as a medium that works well with his writing style.

Anybody else share my feelings or see it in a different light? I know some people couldn't stand Madame Bovary. I'm glad I waited until 22 years of age before undertaking it, as perhaps its my limited reading experience in the classics is why I must have a dictionary nearby as I read :lol:.

[Dr. Hill]

I'm not very far into it yet, but am in the process of reading this.

[eBagger]

oops sorry, I haven't looked around enough on the site to see authors have their own page.

I haven't looked yet, but I'm expecting to see 3 different topics on the same thing I just wrote.

[Amethyst2010]

I read the English translation of Madame Bovary a few months back. It is worth a read, although I have no keen interest to reread the book soon. It has a simple story. For readers who only go after a good plot or story, they may not be able to appreciate Madame Bovary. The author is good in using beautiful language to describe every scene and every character very well to make it interesting.

[Emil Miller]

Flaubert is noted for his command of French which is why he took so long to write his novels. I read Madame Bovary years ago in the original language but, though it was very well-written, I found L'Education Sentimentale to be the better novel.
If you liked Madame Bovary you can be certain of enjoying L'Education Sentimentale.

[mmaria]

The novel goes deep into the psyche of its characters, too.

[Barbarous]

some say that Flaubert has essentially (using M.Flaubert's own terms) the 'debris of a poet', meaning yes, it was primarily a realist text and is logical to see it that way, there is a deeper layer of poetry as the threadstarter has already said. Why I enjoyed Madame Bovary so much is because of this clash between romanticism and realism. Which is astounding, if one keeps in mind this constant 'Donna' Quixote aspect.

[billl]

I wonder which translation the OP was reading.