Madame Bovary
- Author Gustave Flaubert
- Narrator Simon Vance
- Run Time 11 hours and 41 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Classic fiction.
Titles Purchased
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Price p/Title
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What to expect
Emma Bovary is a sensuous, sentimental young woman whose romantic ideals make her dissatisfied with her humdrum married life. Attempting to escape into an exciting world of passion and dreams, she drifts into sordid affairs with Rodolphe Boulanger and Léon Dupuis. The first of these lovers, an older man, dominates the affair, while the second, inexperienced and young, is dominated. The eventual collapse of Emma’s romantic dreams is inevitable, and her disillusionment leads ultimately to her doom.
A brilliant psychological portrait, Madame Bovary searingly depicts the human mind in search of transcendence. Acclaimed as a masterpiece upon its publication in 1857, it catapulted Flaubert to the ranks of the world’s greatest novelists and ushered in a new age of realism in literature.
Critics Review
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“Madame Bovary has a perfection that not only stamps it, but that makes it stand almost alone; it holds itself with such a supreme unapproachable assurance as both excites and defies judgment.”
Henry James -
“Madame Bovary is like the railroad stations erected in its epoch: graceful, even floral, but cast of iron.”
John Updike -
“Flaubert established for good or ill, what most readers think of as modern realist narration, and his influence is almost too familiar to be visible.”
James Woods, author of How Fiction Works -
“Simon Vance’s leisurely reading mirrors the pace of small-town life, and his clear, gentle voice, with its lovely timbre, seems especially suited to delivering the text’s many descriptive passages…Particularly amusing is his portrayal of Monsieur Homais, the voluble village chemist who fancies himself a learned man, and this brings some welcome comic relief to an otherwise tragic story.”
AudioFile
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