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Madame Bovary
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 14 hrs and 14 mins
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Publisher's summary
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.
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- Narrated by: Dan Stevens
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Narrator Dan Stevens ( Downton Abbey) presents an uncanny performance of Mary Shelley's timeless gothic novel, an epic battle between man and monster at its greatest literary pitch. In trying to create life, the young student Victor Frankenstein unleashes forces beyond his control, setting into motion a long and tragic chain of events that brings Victor to the very brink of madness. How he tries to destroy his creation, as it destroys everything Victor loves, is a powerful story of love, friendship, scientific hubris, and horror.
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ARE WE ALWAYS TO BE UNHAPPY?
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 01-28-16
By: Mary Shelley
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Fahrenheit 451
- By: Ray Bradbury
- Narrated by: Tim Robbins
- Length: 5 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television "family."
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Wish I Hadn't Cliff Noted This in High School
- By Joel on 03-27-17
By: Ray Bradbury
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Slayers: A Buffyverse Story
- By: Christopher Golden, Amber Benson
- Narrated by: Amber Benson, Charisma Carpenter, James Charles Leary, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 2 mins
- Original Recording
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Original cast members from the beloved TV series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, reunite for an all-new adventure about connections that never die—even if you bury them. A decade has passed since the epic final battle that concluded Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV). The game-changing spell that gave power to all potential Slayers persists. With new Slayers constantly emerging, things are looking grim for the bad guys.
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A dream come true
- By Anonymous User on 10-12-23
By: Christopher Golden, and others
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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.
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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.
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Ironic, humorous, and restrained
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Madame Bovary
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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.
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Fantastic Narrator
- By A. Laprade-velasco on 07-18-10
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Madame Bovary
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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.
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Irritating French pronunciation
- By Amazon Customer on 10-02-20
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Madame Bovary: A Signature Performance by Leelee Sobieski
- By: Gustave Flaubert
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- Length: 12 hrs and 32 mins
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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.
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Never touch your idols: the gilding will stick
- By Darwin8u on 07-25-15
By: Gustave Flaubert
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Madame Bovary
- By: Gustave Flaubert
- Narrated by: Elaine Wise
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
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Though he embodies neither wealth nor a lavish persona, Charles Bovary - a somewhat established doctor - takes a chance in marrying the young, vibrant, and ambitious farm girl Emma Rouault. At first, Emma is delighted to be married and away from her father's farm, but her thirst for the rich and ornate lifestyle that she witnesses other people living soon drives her away from her husband and into the arms of various suitors.
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Madame Bovary doesn't disappoint
- By Arlene Olsen on 12-11-16
By: Gustave Flaubert
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Madame Bovary
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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.
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Now Here's a Story
- By P. Giorgio on 09-06-03
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Madame Bovary
- By: Gustave Flaubert, Lydia Davis - translator
- Narrated by: Kate Reading
- Length: 13 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
-
Story
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.
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Ironic, humorous, and restrained
- By Esther on 05-13-13
By: Gustave Flaubert, and others
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Madame Bovary
- By: Gustave Flaubert, Gerard Hopkins - translator
- Narrated by: Ronald Pickup
- Length: 15 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
-
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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.
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Fantastic Narrator
- By A. Laprade-velasco on 07-18-10
By: Gustave Flaubert, and others
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Madame Bovary
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- Length: 15 hrs and 8 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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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.
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Irritating French pronunciation
- By Amazon Customer on 10-02-20
By: Gustave Flaubert
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Madame Bovary: A Signature Performance by Leelee Sobieski
- By: Gustave Flaubert
- Narrated by: Leelee Sobieski
- Length: 12 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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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.
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Never touch your idols: the gilding will stick
- By Darwin8u on 07-25-15
By: Gustave Flaubert
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Madame Bovary
- By: Gustave Flaubert
- Narrated by: Elaine Wise
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Though he embodies neither wealth nor a lavish persona, Charles Bovary - a somewhat established doctor - takes a chance in marrying the young, vibrant, and ambitious farm girl Emma Rouault. At first, Emma is delighted to be married and away from her father's farm, but her thirst for the rich and ornate lifestyle that she witnesses other people living soon drives her away from her husband and into the arms of various suitors.
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Madame Bovary doesn't disappoint
- By Arlene Olsen on 12-11-16
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Madame Bovary
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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.
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Good descriptions throughout story.
- By Anonymous User on 09-04-24
By: Gustave Flaubert
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Madame Bovary
- By: Gustave Flaubert
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- Unabridged
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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.
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Que protagonista tan odiosa
- By Gaby Mtz on 11-03-24
By: Gustave Flaubert
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Madame Bovary (AmazonClassics Edition)
- By: Gustave Flaubert, Eleanor Marx-Aveling - translator
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 12 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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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.
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Masterpiece
- By Andrei on 09-04-20
By: Gustave Flaubert, and others
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Sentimental Education
- By: Gustave Flaubert
- Narrated by: Andrew Wincott
- Length: 20 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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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
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Madame Bovary [French Version]
- By: Gustave Flaubert
- Narrated by: Alain Lawrence
- Length: 14 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Issue de la bourgeoisie, Emma Bovary est élevée dans un couvent, où elle fera son "éducation sentimentale" en lisant les œuvres romantiques à la mode. Son mari, Charles Bovary, ne ressemble en rien aux amants mystérieux et délicats de ses lectures : c'est un officier de santé qui exerce dans un village normand où Emma, confrontée à la réalité de la vie quotidienne, va peu à peu perdre pied.
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Excellent book
- By Matt H. on 02-17-17
By: Gustave Flaubert
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A Sentimental Education
- By: Gustave Flaubert
- Narrated by: Jonathan Fried
- Length: 17 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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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.
By: Gustave Flaubert
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Buddenbrooks
- The Decline of a Family
- By: Thomas Mann
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 26 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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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.
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Where Have You Been All My Life, Thomas Mann?
- By Virginia Waldron on 03-30-17
By: Thomas Mann
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Madame Bovary
- By: Gustave Flaubert
- Narrated by: Julie Christie
- Length: 14 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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The refusal to settle for what life has dealt you and the consequences of trying to change it is a theme which hasn’t altered much in the last 150 years, and the astonishing beauty and challenge of Madame Bovary is as electric today as it was then. Very few books have created this much outrage and adoration.
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Savaging a Masterpiece
- By Scott Mendeloff on 03-02-19
By: Gustave Flaubert
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How Fiction Works
- By: James Wood
- Narrated by: James Adams
- Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Ranging widely from Homer to David Foster Wallace, from What Maisie Knew to Make Way for Ducklings, Wood takes the reader through the basic elements of the art, step by step. He sums up two decades of insight with wit and concision, resulting in nothing less than a philosophy of the novel, which has won critical acclaim nationwide, from the San Francisco Chronicle to the New York Times Book Review.
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Educational!
- By Don on 05-04-09
By: James Wood
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Madame Bovary [French Version]
- By: Gustave Flaubert
- Narrated by: Claude Cyriaque
- Length: 13 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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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
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Lady Audley's Secret
- By: Mary Elizabeth Braddon
- Narrated by: Olivia Poulet
- Length: 13 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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From the author of The Christmas Hirelings comes this Audible Exclusive production of Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s classic sensation novel Lady Audley’s Secret. English actress Olivia Poulet gives an assured and captivating narration; a cornerstone of the genre and a scandal at the time of its publication, Lady Audley’s Secret is an entertaining and shocking tale of high drama and shifting perceptions.
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Classic 19th Century “sensation novel”
- By Susan on 08-20-19
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The Sound and the Fury
- By: William Faulkner
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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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.
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Hang in
- By W.Denis on 07-11-05
By: William Faulkner
What listeners say about Madame Bovary
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Dixie J. Singer
- 08-17-15
EXCELLENT!
This was a wonderful read. I will seek more books by Gustave Flaubert! It is a vacation into another world and another time.
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3 people found this helpful
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- KathrynVB
- 09-17-15
Wonderful classic story, well told
The story takes a long time to set up. I almost gave up at the halfway point. However, when the action begins it is a roller coaster to the end. Juliette Stevenson is excellent, as usual.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Bloo
- 07-08-14
An interesting take on morality
Where does Madame Bovary rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
Fairly high. I liked the performance, and while I hated the heroine, the story was good.
What did you like best about this story?
When Emma suffers for what she has done. I didn't like her much.
What does Juliet Stevenson bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
I liked her inflections for the various characters. It brought things to life. Also, I am terrible at imagining French pronunciations!
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
I may or may not have hissed "YESSSS!" when she was indicted.
Any additional comments?
Does disliking Emma make me a bad feminist?
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29 people found this helpful
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- Joe Kraus
- 05-22-16
News Flash: A Masterpiece
What does Juliet Stevenson bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
Gorgeous voice. There are a couple of minor editing mistakes in this audio version -- two or three times we'd have a sentence repeated -- but she brings a combination of elegance and clarity that really adds to the experience.
Any additional comments?
I think I thought I’d read Bovary a long time ago. That’s probably because I have read Anna Karenina (and to a lesser extent Chekhov’s “Lady with a Dog”), the other great adulterous novel of the mid-19th century, and I have also read Flaubert’s “A Simple Heart” (in French, no less, thank you Madames Nichols et Bork). It’s also because it’s so entwined in other literature and art that you feel you know it already. It casts the kind of light that makes you think you’ve spent more direct time on it than you have.
So, news flash: this is really good. Flaubert has the gift of the great sentence (even in translation) that he’s famous for. He’ll find the perfect detail or the perfect metaphor. Or, other times, he’ll find the perfect sentence to sum up reveries of one sort or another, and often that sentence will turn what’s come before it on its head.
If Tolstoy is the great Romantic, celebrating the passion that drives Anna’s unhappiness forward, then Flaubert is already a Modernist, someone as intrigued by irony as by the subject before him. That’s true with many of those staggering sentences, of course (he’s like a master painter with brush strokes that speak a consistent language apart from and yet constituting the work as a whole) but it’s also true of his view of Emma. I’d always assumed that we’d be called to root for Emma, that she would be (as Anna in many ways is) a proto-feminist figure whose unhappiness demonstrates the need to reimagine the role of women in society. I think it’s possible to read this that way, but I’m not convinced Flaubert was polemicizing. (And Tolstoy, great as he was, generally was polemicizing about something.)
Instead, I think we are often supposed to judge Emma. I think we are supposed to see her as self-centered and, to take an old-fashioned word then current, immoral. She is scandalous, and she leaves destruction in her wake. Flaubert seems unafraid of her sexuality – there’s great passion here, and it’s fun to imagine the good people of the 1860s and 1870s shocked by its explicit scenes – but he’s also unafraid to judge it. Sure, Charles is a dope, a mediocrity who can’t match her beauty or her intelligence, but we seem to be told here that everything would have turned out all right if only she’d managed to make herself satisfied with what she had. She had the materials for happiness before her, but she had to keep pushing, had to grab for more than was her allotted share.
Anyway, I have almost nothing original to say about this, but then I doubt I’d have anything original to say about visiting the Louvre, something I still hope to do some day. In each case, we’re talking about masterpieces, so there’s nothing wrong with just standing before them, mouth slightly agape, and admiring what’s there.
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17 people found this helpful
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- AR
- 05-01-20
A novel far ahead of its time. Story of discontent, passion and tragedy
Beautifully written by French writer Gustave Flaubert in mid 19th century. The main character Emma lives beyond her means in order to escape the fullness of rural life.
When this novel was published in 1856, it was attacked by public prosecutors for its “obscenity”. There was a trial and Flaubert was eventually acquitted. This made this a best seller. Not an average sordid affair story as it’s brutal and seems a true story of the time. Must read!!
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- DHW
- 06-11-14
Excellent narrator, beautiful writing
Would you listen to Madame Bovary again? Why?
Yes, parts.
Which character – as performed by Juliet Stevenson – was your favorite?
Juliet Stevenson is such an excellent narrator. Her readings are at a perfect pace and her character interpretations are always wonderful. Ms. Stevenson's understanding of the text and intelligence make listening a joy. I become so lost in the characters she portrays that I forget it is one person reading! Can't say Emma Bovary is a favorite character, but her self-centeredness and vacuousness come through in the dialogue as read by the narrator.
Any additional comments?
I can understand why this novel is so well known. The writing (and this translation) draw you in. But the characters are not sympathetic and I don't understand why Emma Bovary is so empty and why she expresses no remorse at the end of the novel. I feel for her clueless husband and especially for her daughter Berthe.
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32 people found this helpful
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- Bev Hope
- 01-04-21
Glad I read it again.
I read Madam Bovary in college. Reading it decades later, I realized how little I remembered and why this is a classic book to read and re-read. Mahler was ahead of his tine . He paid dearly for writing what was a scandalous novel at the time.
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- Tom Barreiros
- 03-12-18
A profoundly moving book on the nature of Happines
I loved this book. One of the classics. Juliet Stevenson does a phenomenal job with the reading and narration. The book's main theme is a Meditation on the fleeting happiness that come from the world and positions therein. It takes awhile to finish,but stick with it. Its got great payoff.
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- Diane
- 10-29-19
A little Dickens-ish
Of course Juliet could read the dictionary & make it interesting. The symbolism and overindulgent wasteland of the characters is more depressing than I remembered. What an in your face cautionary tale. Sort of have a love/hate relationship w the story.
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- William
- 05-04-22
Flaubert is an iconoclast
For those who left a negative review of this literary masterpiece it may be that the content of this story has gone over your heads. This is a realistic “romantic” novel, or one that intentionally shatters the romantic and idealistic traditions, characters, settings, and all manner of plot of the romantic movement in order to expose their essential unreality. For those who cry how this book is mundane, yes. It is mundane. And therein lies its excellence. (Pay attention to these juxtapositions.) It also exposes bare the arrogance and snobbery of a thoroughly conceited, ungrateful, self-absorbed, although brainwashed and misguided, woman who is infatuated with her literary fantasies.
What makes this tale so tragic? It probably is an accurate reflection of the hubris and vanity of the age in which Flaubert lived, honest enough to call the law down on his head.
Stevenson is a superb narrator. Absolutely stellar.
Several parts of this novel are very amusing, especially the interactions between the chemist and the priest.
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