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Oh boy! This was just plain depressing. I picked this up because someone suggested that this was similar to Anna Karenina (which I loved), but this was just so different.
I have been trying to read this for almost 2 years, & finally, I decided that I could do it no longer, and just pushed through.
Initially, I empathised with Emma, but over the course of the book, she became just more & more intolerable. I understand that the fact that she didn't * deserve* to suffer in a *loveless* marriage, bu ...more
I have been trying to read this for almost 2 years, & finally, I decided that I could do it no longer, and just pushed through.
Initially, I empathised with Emma, but over the course of the book, she became just more & more intolerable. I understand that the fact that she didn't * deserve* to suffer in a *loveless* marriage, bu ...more
Flaubert’s care with language is legendary. Few people — even native English speakers — who pay serious attention to World Literature haven’t heard the stories of how Flaubert would work painstakingly at every sentence to make sure even the sound of it was as close to perfection as he could possibly get. While this characteristic is a given among most poets (a “given,” but not necessarily a “gotten” among many contemporary poets), it’s relatively rare among novelists. But then, even someone of F
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Having read this many years ago but remembering nearly nothing about it, I was pleasantly surprised by the beautiful writing and style that Flaubert showed here. This was in spite of the characters being highly unlikable (with perhaps the exception of Leon) and the plot cumbersome and tragic. But the ground-breaking (for its time) novel was enthralling, and I look forward to the Goodreads group discussion to come. Interestingly, the one thing I recall from my first read 40 years ago was that it
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