
Madame Bovary
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
3 months free
Buy for $20.25
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Kate Reading
About this listen
Now a major motion picture starring Mia Wasikowska, Paul Giamatti, Laura Carmichael, Ezra Miller, and Rhys Ifans, and directed by Sophie Barthes.
Emma Bovary is the original desperate housewife. Beautiful but bored, she is married to the provincial doctor Charles Bovary yet harbors dreams of an elegant and passionate life. Escaping into sentimental novels, she finds her fantasies dashed by the tedium of her days. Motherhood proves to be a burden; religion is only a brief distraction. In an effort to make her life everything she believes it should be, she spends lavishly on clothes and on her home and embarks on two disappointing affairs. Soon heartbroken and crippled by debts, Emma takes drastic action with tragic consequences for her husband and daughter.
When published in 1857, Madame Bovary was deemed so lifelike that many women claimed they were the model for its heroine. Today the novel is considered the first masterpiece of realist fiction. In this landmark translation, Lydia Davis honors the nuances and particulars of a style that has long beguiled readers of French, giving new life in English to the book that redefined the novel as an art form.
Public Domain (P)2010 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
-
Madame Bovary
- Penguin Classics
- By: Gustave Flaubert
- Narrated by: Fiona Glascott
- Length: 15 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Irritating French pronunciation
- By Amazon Customer on 10-02-20
By: Gustave Flaubert
-
Anna Karenina
- Penguin Classics
- By: Leo Tolstoy, Richard Pevear - translator, Larissa Volokhonsky - translator
- Narrated by: Miranda Pleasence
- Length: 36 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Anna Karenina seems to have everything - beauty, wealth, popularity and an adored son. But she feels that her life is empty until the moment she encounters the impetuous officer Count Vronsky. Their subsequent affair scandalizes society and family alike and soon brings jealously and bitterness in its wake. Contrasting with this tale of love and self-destruction is the vividly observed story of Levin, a man striving to find contentment and a meaning to his life - and also a self-portrait of Tolstoy himself.
-
-
Happy listeners are all alike
- By Reader on 12-12-20
By: Leo Tolstoy, and others
-
Sentimental Education
- By: Gustave Flaubert
- Narrated by: Andrew Wincott
- Length: 20 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Upon arriving home in Normandy, Frederick catches his first glimpse of Marie Arnoux, a mysterious and beautiful woman who leaves a lasting impression on him. Eventually they make each other's acquaintance and Marie becomes a symbol of unattainable perfection for Frederick, whose unrequited infatuation leaves him bouncing from one passion to another, falling in and out of love, money and society.
By: Gustave Flaubert
-
Lolita
- By: Vladimir Nabokov, Claire Messud
- Narrated by: Jeremy Irons, Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 11 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Awe and exhilaration—along with heartbreak and mordant wit—abound in Lolita, which tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsession for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Lolita is also the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America.
-
-
An Absolutely Gorgeous Audible Experience
- By Jim on 10-26-05
By: Vladimir Nabokov, and others
-
The Magic Mountain
- By: Thomas Mann
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 37 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hans Castorp is, on the face of it, an ordinary man in his early 20s, on course to start a career in ship engineering in his home town of Hamburg, when he decides to travel to the Berghof Santatorium in Davos. The year is 1912 and an oblivious world is on the brink of war. Castorp’s friend Joachim Ziemssen is taking the cure and a three-week visit seems a perfect break before work begins. But when Castorp arrives he is surprised to find an established community of patients, and little by little, he gets drawn into the closeted life and the individual personalities of the residents.
-
-
A Magical Journey
- By Paul on 08-20-20
By: Thomas Mann
-
The Pole
- By: J. M. Coetzee
- Narrated by: Colin Mace
- Length: 3 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Exacting yet unpredictable, pithy yet complex, J. M. Coetzee’s The Pole tells the story of Wittold Walccyzkiecz, a vigorous, extravagantly white-haired pianist and interpreter of Chopin who becomes infatuated with Beatriz, a stylish Spanish patron of the arts, after she helps organize his concert in Barcelona. Although Beatriz, a married woman, is initially unimpressed by Wittold and his “gleaming dentures,” she soon finds herself pursued and ineluctably swept into his world.
-
-
The discrepancies in details spoil the story
- By romuald on 01-12-24
By: J. M. Coetzee
-
Madame Bovary
- Penguin Classics
- By: Gustave Flaubert
- Narrated by: Fiona Glascott
- Length: 15 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Irritating French pronunciation
- By Amazon Customer on 10-02-20
By: Gustave Flaubert
-
Anna Karenina
- Penguin Classics
- By: Leo Tolstoy, Richard Pevear - translator, Larissa Volokhonsky - translator
- Narrated by: Miranda Pleasence
- Length: 36 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Anna Karenina seems to have everything - beauty, wealth, popularity and an adored son. But she feels that her life is empty until the moment she encounters the impetuous officer Count Vronsky. Their subsequent affair scandalizes society and family alike and soon brings jealously and bitterness in its wake. Contrasting with this tale of love and self-destruction is the vividly observed story of Levin, a man striving to find contentment and a meaning to his life - and also a self-portrait of Tolstoy himself.
-
-
Happy listeners are all alike
- By Reader on 12-12-20
By: Leo Tolstoy, and others
-
Sentimental Education
- By: Gustave Flaubert
- Narrated by: Andrew Wincott
- Length: 20 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Upon arriving home in Normandy, Frederick catches his first glimpse of Marie Arnoux, a mysterious and beautiful woman who leaves a lasting impression on him. Eventually they make each other's acquaintance and Marie becomes a symbol of unattainable perfection for Frederick, whose unrequited infatuation leaves him bouncing from one passion to another, falling in and out of love, money and society.
By: Gustave Flaubert
-
Lolita
- By: Vladimir Nabokov, Claire Messud
- Narrated by: Jeremy Irons, Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 11 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Awe and exhilaration—along with heartbreak and mordant wit—abound in Lolita, which tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsession for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Lolita is also the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America.
-
-
An Absolutely Gorgeous Audible Experience
- By Jim on 10-26-05
By: Vladimir Nabokov, and others
-
The Magic Mountain
- By: Thomas Mann
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 37 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hans Castorp is, on the face of it, an ordinary man in his early 20s, on course to start a career in ship engineering in his home town of Hamburg, when he decides to travel to the Berghof Santatorium in Davos. The year is 1912 and an oblivious world is on the brink of war. Castorp’s friend Joachim Ziemssen is taking the cure and a three-week visit seems a perfect break before work begins. But when Castorp arrives he is surprised to find an established community of patients, and little by little, he gets drawn into the closeted life and the individual personalities of the residents.
-
-
A Magical Journey
- By Paul on 08-20-20
By: Thomas Mann
-
The Pole
- By: J. M. Coetzee
- Narrated by: Colin Mace
- Length: 3 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Exacting yet unpredictable, pithy yet complex, J. M. Coetzee’s The Pole tells the story of Wittold Walccyzkiecz, a vigorous, extravagantly white-haired pianist and interpreter of Chopin who becomes infatuated with Beatriz, a stylish Spanish patron of the arts, after she helps organize his concert in Barcelona. Although Beatriz, a married woman, is initially unimpressed by Wittold and his “gleaming dentures,” she soon finds herself pursued and ineluctably swept into his world.
-
-
The discrepancies in details spoil the story
- By romuald on 01-12-24
By: J. M. Coetzee
-
Don Quixote
- Translated by Edith Grossman
- By: Edith Grossman - translator, Miguel de Cervantes
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 39 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sixteenth-century Spanish gentleman Don Quixote, fed by his own delusional fantasies, takes to the road in search of chivalrous adventures. But his quest leads to more trouble than triumph. At once humorous, romantic, and sad, Don Quixote is a literary landmark. This fresh edition, by award-winning translator Edith Grossman, brings the tale to life as never before.
-
-
My Fourth Try at an Audible Quixote
- By James on 12-24-12
By: Edith Grossman - translator, and others
-
To the Lighthouse
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Nicole Kidman
- Length: 6 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
To the Lighthouse is Virginia Woolf’s arresting analysis of domestic family life, centering on the Ramseys and their visits to the Isle of Skye in Scotland in the early 1900s. Nicole Kidman (Moulin Rouge, Eyes Wide Shut), who won an Oscar for her portrayal of Woolf in the film adaptation of Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel
The Hours, brings the impressionistic prose of this classic to vibrant life.
-
-
A book that will challenge you to think.
- By Kelly on 04-23-17
By: Virginia Woolf
-
Middlemarch
- By: George Eliot
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 35 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dorothea Brooke is an ardent idealist who represses her vivacity and intelligence for the cold, theological pedant Casaubon. One man understands her true nature: the artist Will Ladislaw. But how can love triumph against her sense of duty and Casaubon’s mean spirit? Meanwhile, in the little world of Middlemarch, the broader world is mirrored: the world of politics, social change, and reforms, as well as betrayal, greed, blackmail, ambition, and disappointment.
-
-
Best Audible book ever
- By Molly-o on 12-25-11
By: George Eliot
-
Mrs. Dalloway
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 7 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is a June day in London in 1923, and the lovely Clarissa Dalloway is having a party. Whom will she see? Her friend Peter, back from India, who has never really stopped loving her? What about Sally, with whom Clarissa had her life’s happiest moment? Meanwhile, the shell-shocked Septimus Smith is struggling with his life on the same London day.
-
-
One Tough Read Perfectly Delivered
- By Chris on 06-11-12
By: Virginia Woolf
-
The Great Gatsby
- By: F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Narrated by: Jake Gyllenhaal
- Length: 4 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic American novel of the Roaring Twenties is beloved by generations of readers and stands as his crowning work. This new audio edition, authorized by the Fitzgerald estate, is narrated by Oscar-nominated actor Jake Gyllenhaal (Brokeback Mountain). Gyllenhaal's performance is a faithful delivery in the voice of Nick Carraway, the Midwesterner turned New York bond salesman, who rents a small house next door to the mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby....
-
-
Simple, Beautiful, and Exquisitely Textured
- By Darwin8u on 04-09-13
-
Swann's Way
- By: Marcel Proust
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 17 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Swann's Way is the first novel of Marcel Proust's seven-volume magnum opus In Search of Lost Time. After elaborate reminiscences about his childhood with relatives in rural Combray and in urban Paris, Proust's narrator recalls a story regarding Charles Swann, a major figure in his Combray childhood....
-
-
Not the newer, far better translation
- By Samuel Murray on 05-02-11
By: Marcel Proust
-
Emma
- An Audible Original Drama
- By: Jane Austen, Anna Lea - adaptation
- Narrated by: Emma Thompson, Joanne Froggatt, Isabella Inchbald, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Austen wrote, 'I am going to take a heroine whom no-one but myself will much like' and thus introduces the handsome, clever, rich - and flawed, Emma Woodhouse. Emma is perfectly content with her life and sees no need for either love or marriage; nothing however delights her more than matchmaking her fellow residents of Highbury. But when she ignores the warnings of her good friend Mr. Knightley and attempts to arrange a suitable match for her protegee Harriet Smith, her carefully laid plans soon unravel and have consequences that she never expected.
-
-
Background sounds RUINED this
- By Sandra Dodd on 09-09-18
By: Jane Austen, and others
-
The Sound and the Fury
- By: William Faulkner, Casey Cep
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner, Gabra Zackman
- Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Sound and the Fury is the tragedy of the Compson family, featuring some of the most memorable characters in literature: beautiful, rebellious Caddy; the manchild Benjy; haunted, neurotic Quentin; Jason, the brutal cynic; and Dilsey, their black servant. Their lives fragmented and harrowed by history and legacy, the character’s voices and actions mesh to create what is arguably Faulkner’s masterpiece and one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century.
-
-
Hang in
- By W.Denis on 07-11-05
By: William Faulkner, and others
-
The Good Soldier
- By: Ford Madox Ford
- Narrated by: Gildart Jackson
- Length: 7 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Handsome, wealthy, and a veteran of service in India, Captain Edward Ashburnham appears to be the ideal "good soldier" and the embodiment of English upper-class virtues. But for his creator, Ford Madox Ford, he also represents the corruption at society's core. Beneath Ashburnham's charming, polished exterior lurks a soul well-versed in the arts of deception, hypocrisy, and betrayal.
-
-
A tragic, dramatic classic
- By Adeliese Baumann on 10-24-13
By: Ford Madox Ford
-
David Copperfield
- By: Charles Dickens
- Narrated by: Richard Armitage
- Length: 36 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Between his work on the 2014 Audible Audiobook of the Year, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark: A Novel, and his performance of Classic Love Poems, narrator Richard Armitage ( The Hobbit, Hannibal) has quickly become a listener favorite. Now, in this defining performance of Charles Dickens' classic David Copperfield, Armitage lends his unique voice and interpretation, truly inhabiting each character and bringing real energy to the life of one of Dickens' most famous characters.
-
-
A PERFECT narration of an English classic!
- By Wayne on 09-03-17
By: Charles Dickens
-
The Handmaid's Tale
- By: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Claire Danes
- Length: 11 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After a staged terrorist attack kills the President and most of Congress, the government is deposed and taken over by the oppressive and all-controlling Republic of Gilead. Offred is a Handmaid serving in the household of the enigmatic Commander and his bitter wife. She can remember a time when she lived with her husband and daughter and had a job, before she lost even her own name.
-
-
My Top Pick for 2012
- By Em on 11-30-12
By: Margaret Atwood
-
Buddenbrooks
- The Decline of a Family
- By: Thomas Mann
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 26 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
First published in 1900, when Thomas Mann was 25, Buddenbrooks is a minutely imagined chronicle of four generations of a North German mercantile family - a work so true to life that it scandalized the author’s former neighbours in his native Lübeck.
-
-
Where Have You Been All My Life, Thomas Mann?
- By Virginia Waldron on 03-30-17
By: Thomas Mann
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Madame Bovary
- By: Gustave Flaubert
- Narrated by: Davina Porter
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Emma Bovary is not content to be the mere dutiful wife of a French country doctor. She yearns for excitement and a sense of romance that pulls at her so strongly she is powerless to resist, even though pursuing her dreams will exact a terrible price. Learn why Gustave Flaubert's compelling heroine has enchanted and puzzled readers for centuries.
-
-
Now Here's a Story
- By P. Giorgio on 09-06-03
By: Gustave Flaubert
-
Madame Bovary
- Penguin Classics
- By: Gustave Flaubert
- Narrated by: Fiona Glascott
- Length: 15 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Irritating French pronunciation
- By Amazon Customer on 10-02-20
By: Gustave Flaubert
-
Madame Bovary
- By: Gustave Flaubert
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 14 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Madame Bovary, one of the great novels of 19th-century France, Flaubert draws a deeply felt and sympathetic portrait of a woman who, having married a country doctor and found herself unhappy with a rural, genteel existence, longs for love and excitement. However, her aspirations and her desires to escape only bring her further disappointment and eventually lead to unexpected, painful consequences. Flaubert’s critical portrait of bourgeois provincial life remains as powerful as ever
-
-
Excellent narrator, beautiful writing
- By DHW on 06-11-14
By: Gustave Flaubert
-
Madame Bovary [French Version]
- By: Gustave Flaubert
- Narrated by: Claude Cyriaque
- Length: 13 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ce roman n'est pas seulement un drame, c'est un virulent réquisitoire contre la société bourgeoise, contre la médiocrité, contre les conventions, les formules toutes faites et les pensées sur mesure. Si "Madame Bovary" a conservé un immense succès auprès d'un très vaste public, c'est à son caractère profond d'humanité qu'elle le doit. Flaubert a réussi à rendre grand le banal et à donner à ce "cas" un caractère universel.
By: Gustave Flaubert
-
Madame Bovary
- By: Gustave Flaubert
- Narrated by: Glenda Jackson
- Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Emma Bovary is the original desperate housewife. Beautiful but bored, Emma is not content to be the mere dutiful wife of a French country doctor. She believes she was meant for something more—a life of luxury, leisure, and, above all, true and passionate love. She spends lavishly on clothes and on her home and throws herself headlong into a reckless series of doomed affairs. Soon heartbroken and crippled by debts, she takes drastic action, with tragic consequences for her husband and daughter.
-
-
Good descriptions throughout story.
- By Anonymous User on 09-04-24
By: Gustave Flaubert
-
Madame Bovary
- By: Gustave Flaubert, Gerard Hopkins - translator
- Narrated by: Ronald Pickup
- Length: 15 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Before marrying, Emma Bovary believed she would enter a life of luxury and passion like the sentimental stories she'd read in her novels and magazines. Now married to an ordinary country doctor her life is not the romantic ideal she imagined and seeks an escape through having extra-marital affairs. This devastating spiral into deceit and despair leads to catastrophic consequences. Emma Bovary continues to be enjoyed to this day because of its profound humanity, still as fresh today as when it was first written.
-
-
Fantastic Narrator
- By A. Laprade-velasco on 07-18-10
By: Gustave Flaubert, and others
-
Madame Bovary
- By: Gustave Flaubert
- Narrated by: Davina Porter
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Emma Bovary is not content to be the mere dutiful wife of a French country doctor. She yearns for excitement and a sense of romance that pulls at her so strongly she is powerless to resist, even though pursuing her dreams will exact a terrible price. Learn why Gustave Flaubert's compelling heroine has enchanted and puzzled readers for centuries.
-
-
Now Here's a Story
- By P. Giorgio on 09-06-03
By: Gustave Flaubert
-
Madame Bovary
- Penguin Classics
- By: Gustave Flaubert
- Narrated by: Fiona Glascott
- Length: 15 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Irritating French pronunciation
- By Amazon Customer on 10-02-20
By: Gustave Flaubert
-
Madame Bovary
- By: Gustave Flaubert
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 14 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Madame Bovary, one of the great novels of 19th-century France, Flaubert draws a deeply felt and sympathetic portrait of a woman who, having married a country doctor and found herself unhappy with a rural, genteel existence, longs for love and excitement. However, her aspirations and her desires to escape only bring her further disappointment and eventually lead to unexpected, painful consequences. Flaubert’s critical portrait of bourgeois provincial life remains as powerful as ever
-
-
Excellent narrator, beautiful writing
- By DHW on 06-11-14
By: Gustave Flaubert
-
Madame Bovary [French Version]
- By: Gustave Flaubert
- Narrated by: Claude Cyriaque
- Length: 13 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ce roman n'est pas seulement un drame, c'est un virulent réquisitoire contre la société bourgeoise, contre la médiocrité, contre les conventions, les formules toutes faites et les pensées sur mesure. Si "Madame Bovary" a conservé un immense succès auprès d'un très vaste public, c'est à son caractère profond d'humanité qu'elle le doit. Flaubert a réussi à rendre grand le banal et à donner à ce "cas" un caractère universel.
By: Gustave Flaubert
-
Madame Bovary
- By: Gustave Flaubert
- Narrated by: Glenda Jackson
- Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Emma Bovary is the original desperate housewife. Beautiful but bored, Emma is not content to be the mere dutiful wife of a French country doctor. She believes she was meant for something more—a life of luxury, leisure, and, above all, true and passionate love. She spends lavishly on clothes and on her home and throws herself headlong into a reckless series of doomed affairs. Soon heartbroken and crippled by debts, she takes drastic action, with tragic consequences for her husband and daughter.
-
-
Good descriptions throughout story.
- By Anonymous User on 09-04-24
By: Gustave Flaubert
-
Madame Bovary
- By: Gustave Flaubert, Gerard Hopkins - translator
- Narrated by: Ronald Pickup
- Length: 15 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Before marrying, Emma Bovary believed she would enter a life of luxury and passion like the sentimental stories she'd read in her novels and magazines. Now married to an ordinary country doctor her life is not the romantic ideal she imagined and seeks an escape through having extra-marital affairs. This devastating spiral into deceit and despair leads to catastrophic consequences. Emma Bovary continues to be enjoyed to this day because of its profound humanity, still as fresh today as when it was first written.
-
-
Fantastic Narrator
- By A. Laprade-velasco on 07-18-10
By: Gustave Flaubert, and others
-
Madame Bovary: A Signature Performance by Leelee Sobieski
- By: Gustave Flaubert
- Narrated by: Leelee Sobieski
- Length: 12 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A Signature Performance: Leelee Sobieski’s Emma is sultry but vulnerable, offering a sympathetic rendering of the heroine and her plight, allowing the listener to draw his own conclusions about Madame Bovary in this cautionary tale of love, passion, and desperation.
-
-
Never touch your idols: the gilding will stick
- By Darwin8u on 07-25-15
By: Gustave Flaubert
-
The Portrait of a Lady
- By: Henry James
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 26 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Portrait of a Lady tells the compelling and ultimately tragic tale of a beautiful young American woman's encounter with European sophistication. Set principally in England and Italy, the story follows Isabel Archer's fortunes as a variety of admirers vie for her hand. Her choice will be crucial, and she is not wanting for advice, whether from the generous-spirited Ralph Touchett or the charming Madame Merle.
-
-
Couldn't get past the terrible American accents.
- By Sarah on 04-07-17
By: Henry James
-
Sentimental Education
- By: Gustave Flaubert
- Narrated by: Michael Maloney
- Length: 15 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Frederic Moreau is a law student returning home to Normandy from Paris when he first notices Mme Arnoux, a slender, dark woman several years older than himself. It is the beginning of an infatuation that will last a lifetime. He befriends her husband, an influential businessman, and their paths cross and re-cross over the years. Through financial upheaval, political turmoil, and countless affairs, Mme Arnoux remains the constant, unattainable love of Moreau’s life.
-
-
When Crimes of Passion Were All the Fashion
- By W Perry Hall on 03-12-17
By: Gustave Flaubert
-
The Portrait of a Lady
- By: Henry James
- Narrated by: Erin Bateman
- Length: 23 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Isabel Archer is a young woman who has inherited a large sum of money after the death of her father. She is invited to visit her aunt and uncle’s estate in London, where she is greeted by a cast of eclectic neighbors, many of whom offer her marriage very quickly due to her status. Isabel is set on maintaining independence though and refuses several offers of marriage as she lives in pursuit of her destiny. Eventually, she does fall prey to the people trying to gain her fortune and settles into an unhappy marriage with an egotistical man named Gilbert Osmond.
By: Henry James
-
Sentimental Education
- By: Gustave Flaubert
- Narrated by: Andrew Wincott
- Length: 20 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Upon arriving home in Normandy, Frederick catches his first glimpse of Marie Arnoux, a mysterious and beautiful woman who leaves a lasting impression on him. Eventually they make each other's acquaintance and Marie becomes a symbol of unattainable perfection for Frederick, whose unrequited infatuation leaves him bouncing from one passion to another, falling in and out of love, money and society.
By: Gustave Flaubert
-
Swann's Way
- By: Marcel Proust
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 17 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Swann's Way is the first novel of Marcel Proust's seven-volume magnum opus In Search of Lost Time. After elaborate reminiscences about his childhood with relatives in rural Combray and in urban Paris, Proust's narrator recalls a story regarding Charles Swann, a major figure in his Combray childhood....
-
-
Not the newer, far better translation
- By Samuel Murray on 05-02-11
By: Marcel Proust
-
Madame Bovary (AmazonClassics Edition)
- By: Gustave Flaubert, Eleanor Marx-Aveling - translator
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 12 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Emma Bovary, daughter of an uneducated farmer and wife of a dull doctor in northern France, harbors a passion for everything beyond her grasp - sophistication, romance, love, and deliverance from her banal provincial life. Motivated by the primal, idealized, and vain, she seeks adventure. And with each new endeavor, Emma sets for herself an inevitable and inescapable trap.
-
-
Masterpiece
- By Andrei on 09-04-20
By: Gustave Flaubert, and others
-
Three Tales
- By: Gustave Flaubert
- Narrated by: Andrew Wincott
- Length: 4 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Published at the end of Flaubert’s career, Three Tales is a collection of three compelling short stories about faith, loneliness and love. In "A Simple Heart", a saint-like servant girl begins to experience religious visions of her pet parrot after enduring the loss of loved ones. "The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller" presents the origin story of Julian the Hospitaller, who renounces the violence of his past and cares for the indigent. "Herodias", the final story, retells the beheading of St. John the Baptist, and the seduction of Herod by Salome.
-
-
disappointing
- By SB on 08-13-22
By: Gustave Flaubert
-
The Red and the Black
- By: Stendhal
- Narrated by: Davina Porter
- Length: 20 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
So what would Al Gore choose if he had a book club? Gore named Stendhal's The Red and the Black, a 19th century classic chock full of adultery, betrayal, and moral vacuity, as his favorite book on a recent broadcast of Oprah. It's a bit shocking of a choice, given his wife and running mate's position on clean, wholesome literature. Listen and decide for yourself the merit of this presidential pick.
-
-
Almost perfect
- By Erez on 05-29-08
By: Stendhal
-
Ben-Hur
- A Tale of the Christ
- By: Lew Wallace
- Narrated by: Lawrence Skinner
- Length: 23 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"Ben-Hur" is a historical novel by Lew Wallace, a story of a hero named Judah Ben-Hur, a Jewish nobleman who was falsely accused of an attempted assassination and enslaved by the Romans. Judah first encounters Jesus, who offers him a drink of water and encouragement, as Judah is being marched to a galley to be a slave. Their lives continue to intersect as the story unfolds. Judah survives his ordeal as a galley slave, after befriending and saving the commander of his ship, who later adopts him.
-
-
Great Story of early Christianity
- By Fellermom on 02-25-22
By: Lew Wallace
-
Madame Bovary
- By: Gustave Flaubert
- Narrated by: Macarena García
- Length: 12 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
La soñadora Emma, una joven de provincias casada con Charles Bovary, quien la ama pero es incapaz de comprenderla y satisfacerla, buscará la realización de sus sueños en otros amores, pasionales y platónicos..., pero ninguno de ellos logrará calmar su desesperada ansiedad y sus románticas inquietudes. La publicación de "Madame Bovary" (1856) provocó el escándalo de la burguesía francesa, esclava de mil prejuicios, y el proceso judicial que siguió contribuyó a un éxito editorial sin precedentes.
-
-
Que protagonista tan odiosa
- By Gaby Mtz on 11-03-24
By: Gustave Flaubert
-
Anna Karenina
- Penguin Classics
- By: Leo Tolstoy, Richard Pevear - translator, Larissa Volokhonsky - translator
- Narrated by: Miranda Pleasence
- Length: 36 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Anna Karenina seems to have everything - beauty, wealth, popularity and an adored son. But she feels that her life is empty until the moment she encounters the impetuous officer Count Vronsky. Their subsequent affair scandalizes society and family alike and soon brings jealously and bitterness in its wake. Contrasting with this tale of love and self-destruction is the vividly observed story of Levin, a man striving to find contentment and a meaning to his life - and also a self-portrait of Tolstoy himself.
-
-
Happy listeners are all alike
- By Reader on 12-12-20
By: Leo Tolstoy, and others
The novel was ground-breaking in any number of ways, not the least of which is the well of human emotions that surge through one while reading it. The clunky translations of the past took away from the novel and the experience of all of the sadness, anger, disgust, contempt, pity and shame accentuated in this edition.
The narrator does an excellent job both in portraying the pathos of Emma Bovary and in stoking the listener's contempt for her.
Prose exquisitely mines a range of emotions
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Excellent reading of the newest and best translation
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Superlative
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Though the book is excellent in execution and substance, I wouldn't want to reread it because of the sad tragic content.
I realize that much of the story is realistic, however I prefer to think and hope that humans will recognize the value of making better decisions resulting in happier outcomes.
Lessons learned: Selfishness, greed, lack of contentment and haughtiness are poison to our existence and overall health.
Ms Reading's narration was exceptional!
My, my what a tragic story!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Beautifully Narrated Classic
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Oh what a tangled web we weave
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Nothing good or bad
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Amazing Narrator
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Reading reads with perfect inflections, making Emma sound airy and "arty," Charles slow and pitiful, Leon slippery, etc. No silly attempts at trying to sound male; just excellent infusions of the character's personality into his/her voice to make him/her sound believable. The speed is just right. I've heard other narrations by Kate Reading and some don't match up in quality or direction.
The writing style seems so effortless and light that you almost think Flaubert knocked it out with the wave of a hand, but as you keep listening, you realize what a brilliantly composed, tightly plotted piece this is. Also superb is Davis's introduction in the print version. It's not in the audio version, but if you can get your hands on a print (or digi) copy, by all means, read!
Ironic, humorous, and restrained
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Just too long winded
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.