2.5

I can't believe I avoided this book for so long. I tried to read this almost ten years ago and I wasn't ready for it, and I never got past the first chapter. I've had it on my "to-read" shelf since then. This time I instantly got into the story, I was sucked into times and the characters from the first paragraph.
It is true what everyone has ever written about Madame Bovary, she is selfish, flighty, and completely self-destructive. Every problem she has she created, and yet she blames everyone and everything around her. Madame Bovary is never satisfied with her life and is always trying to get what she doesn't have. When she gains something she thought she wanted, it soon bores her or proves deficient in some way, so she begins to look for and covet something else. While she is obssesing over herself, longing for wealth, storybook romance, and social acclaim, she ignores what she has, and her responsibilities. She spends money on fancy, useless things, while the everyday needs of her family and home go ignored. As a mother she ignores her child (Berthe), unless in a plot to gain attention or love it was conveniant to use her young daughter. She runs into the arms of men she thinks mirror the romantic heroes of her fantasies, with little to no consideration for her own husband. She ruins her husbands career, and blames him for being a failure. She steals property and money from her family and blames them for not having more to give. It is never her fault, it is always someone else's shortcomings who made her do what she does.
The saddest part of Madame Bovary's selfishness is that while she runs from her husband and home she is running from the man who truly loves her, as passionatly as she ever wanted to be loved. She ignores the child who would have loved her unconditionally. When she sees the ruin she brought to her family, and the humiliation she will suffer, she kills herself instead of facing her husband or her peers. In the end Madame Bovary destroys the home where she would have been accepted, forgiven, and loved for her entire life if she could only have accepted her life and been happy.

Damn this was intense. I devoured it!

I love a classic wherein everyone is either a terrible person or simply annoying

I wanted to give up on this book. I would say it doesn’t get “good” until page 160 which is half way through! I understand the literary quality of the book but just hated the slow prose of the regular life and only enjoyed the scandalous sections and even those were just okay. Pushed on for book club but def leaned on sparknotes on this one.

Still can’t stop thinking about how there is some Emma Bovary in all of us

Yes, read it!