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buddhafish 's review for:
Madame Bovary
by Gustave Flaubert
95th book of 2021.
3.5. So glad I finally read this even though I failed to find the apparently superior translation by Lydia Davis. That being said, Wall's translation is still stunning and is a testament to the stories about Flaubert labouring every single phrasing in his work. My main problem with it is that as a 19thC novel it is fairly predictable in its plot. In fact, most of the time you can guess how novels of this period wrap-up. The ending did carry some emotional weight though, helped by Flaubert's prose. I suppose contextually this novel becomes more powerful by Emma Bovary's actions/thoughts as a woman of the time and being written by a man no less. Nowadays adultery doesn't raise the eyebrows like it used to, of course, but it's easy to imagine what this was like at its publication. I almost gave this book 4-stars for the prose alone but honestly I was rather bored reading it at times and read it very slowly, only stomaching so many pages at once before having to put it down. I underlined a fair bit, good quotes such as, 'Love was gradually dimmed by absence, regrets were smothered by habit', and countless longer descriptions of setting, which Flaubert does quite a lot; they are beautiful but sometimes get in the way of the plot. But can you really complain about paragraphs like this?:
So paragraphs like that almost beg for a higher rating and they deserve it. But I couldn't help but feel the elegant prose was stifled a little by everything mentioned above. Emma is a selfish and sometimes irritating character but she had my respect at the same time (or rather Flaubert did) when she thought things like, 'She wanted to do battle with men, spit in their faces, crush them all'. And yet despite this I found the novel lacking in some sort of depth. It reminded me ever so slightly of Middlemarch, though Eliot's novel is as well written if not better and brimming with philosophical depth and emotion. The more I read around the 19thC the more I realise how utterly brilliant Middlemarch was and how it is perhaps deserving of the 5-stars I failed to give it.
3.5. So glad I finally read this even though I failed to find the apparently superior translation by Lydia Davis. That being said, Wall's translation is still stunning and is a testament to the stories about Flaubert labouring every single phrasing in his work. My main problem with it is that as a 19thC novel it is fairly predictable in its plot. In fact, most of the time you can guess how novels of this period wrap-up. The ending did carry some emotional weight though, helped by Flaubert's prose. I suppose contextually this novel becomes more powerful by Emma Bovary's actions/thoughts as a woman of the time and being written by a man no less. Nowadays adultery doesn't raise the eyebrows like it used to, of course, but it's easy to imagine what this was like at its publication. I almost gave this book 4-stars for the prose alone but honestly I was rather bored reading it at times and read it very slowly, only stomaching so many pages at once before having to put it down. I underlined a fair bit, good quotes such as, 'Love was gradually dimmed by absence, regrets were smothered by habit', and countless longer descriptions of setting, which Flaubert does quite a lot; they are beautiful but sometimes get in the way of the plot. But can you really complain about paragraphs like this?:
In the summer heat, more of the bank was above water, exposing the garden walls to their base, with their little flights of steps going down to the river. It was flowing silently, swift and cold to the eye: tall clustering grasses arched over it, bending to the current, and, like cast-off green hair, uncoiled their fronds in the limpid depths. Now and then, on the tips of the reeds or the leaves of the water lilies, some slender-legged insect crawled or came to rest. Sunbeams pierced the tiny blue bubbles in the waves as they rippled and died away; the old lopped willows gazed in the water at their grey bark; out beyond, all around, the meadows looked empty.
So paragraphs like that almost beg for a higher rating and they deserve it. But I couldn't help but feel the elegant prose was stifled a little by everything mentioned above. Emma is a selfish and sometimes irritating character but she had my respect at the same time (or rather Flaubert did) when she thought things like, 'She wanted to do battle with men, spit in their faces, crush them all'. And yet despite this I found the novel lacking in some sort of depth. It reminded me ever so slightly of Middlemarch, though Eliot's novel is as well written if not better and brimming with philosophical depth and emotion. The more I read around the 19thC the more I realise how utterly brilliant Middlemarch was and how it is perhaps deserving of the 5-stars I failed to give it.