Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

Great read.  I had wanted to read it en français, but I finally decided to give in and read it in English, since that’s the only version available to me (yes, I know I could go online, but I didn’t want to pay that much).  Plus, I hate to admit it, but my French is getting so rusty, it would have been slow going.  

There’s a reason that this book is famous.  What more can I add to what I’m sure are the plethora of dissertations out there?  What a marvelous portrait of a discontented woman!  I liked the line where Emma realizes that “adultery can be as banal as marriage.”  If only people could just realize that before they start straying from their marriage vows.  The blind, deformed beggar reminded me of the character crushed in the train accident at the beginning of Anna Karenina.  I suppose some parallels could be drawn there.  Like so much of French lit there was the usual conflict between religion and secularism – in fact, I wonder if that’s really what the book is supposed to be about, and not adultery at all.