Madame Bovary of the Suburbs
by Sophie Divry | Literature & Fiction | This book has not been rated.
ISBN: 0857054708 Global Overview for this book
ISBN: 0857054708 Global Overview for this book
Registered by Annimanni of Espoo, Uusimaa / Nyland Finland on 7/27/2018
This Book is Currently in the Wild!
This Book is Currently in the Wild!
2 journalers for this copy...
From the publisher's website:
"The story of a woman's life, from childhood to death, somewhere in provincial France, from the 1950s to just shy of 2025.
She has doting parents, does well at school, finds a loving husband after one abortive attempt at passion, buys a big house with a moonlit terrace, makes decent money, has children, changes jobs, retires, grows old and dies. All in the comfort that the middle-classes have grown accustomed to.
But she's bored.
She takes up all sorts of outlets to try to make something happen in her life: adultery, charity work, esotericism, manic house-cleaning, motherhood and various hobbies - each one abandoned faster than the last. But no matter what she does, her life remains unfocussed and unfulfilled. Nothing truly satisfies her, because deep down - just like the town where she lives - the landscape is non-descript, flat, horizontal.
Sophie Divry dramatises the philosophical conflict between freedom and comfort that marks women's lives in a materialistic world. Our heroine is an endearing, contemporary Emma Bovary, and Divry's prose will remind readers of the best of Houellebecq, the cold, implacable historian who paints a precise portrait of an era and those who inhabit it and in doing so renders existence indelibly absurd.
Translated from the French by Alison Anderson"
***
I bought this earlier this week at Shakespeare and Company in Paris and devoured it in two days. It's the second novel by Divry that I've read (the first one was The Library of Unrequited Love, which I enjoyed very much as well) and makes me admire her originality and skill. Whereas The Library was a riveting soliloquy, Madame Bovary is written in the second person (a rare treat), making the reader feel as if the book was written about her. This goes well with the theme of everyday life with all its boring ordinariness, triviality, repetition, stereotypes etc. and – surprisingly enough – makes it both very French and very identifiable and, as such, compulsive reading. Recommended!
"The story of a woman's life, from childhood to death, somewhere in provincial France, from the 1950s to just shy of 2025.
She has doting parents, does well at school, finds a loving husband after one abortive attempt at passion, buys a big house with a moonlit terrace, makes decent money, has children, changes jobs, retires, grows old and dies. All in the comfort that the middle-classes have grown accustomed to.
But she's bored.
She takes up all sorts of outlets to try to make something happen in her life: adultery, charity work, esotericism, manic house-cleaning, motherhood and various hobbies - each one abandoned faster than the last. But no matter what she does, her life remains unfocussed and unfulfilled. Nothing truly satisfies her, because deep down - just like the town where she lives - the landscape is non-descript, flat, horizontal.
Sophie Divry dramatises the philosophical conflict between freedom and comfort that marks women's lives in a materialistic world. Our heroine is an endearing, contemporary Emma Bovary, and Divry's prose will remind readers of the best of Houellebecq, the cold, implacable historian who paints a precise portrait of an era and those who inhabit it and in doing so renders existence indelibly absurd.
Translated from the French by Alison Anderson"
***
I bought this earlier this week at Shakespeare and Company in Paris and devoured it in two days. It's the second novel by Divry that I've read (the first one was The Library of Unrequited Love, which I enjoyed very much as well) and makes me admire her originality and skill. Whereas The Library was a riveting soliloquy, Madame Bovary is written in the second person (a rare treat), making the reader feel as if the book was written about her. This goes well with the theme of everyday life with all its boring ordinariness, triviality, repetition, stereotypes etc. and – surprisingly enough – makes it both very French and very identifiable and, as such, compulsive reading. Recommended!
Brought home from the local meet.
Journal Entry 3 by saarahoo at Vigilia Park in Tenerife - Santiago del Teide, Santa Cruz de Tenerife Spain on Friday, January 4, 2019
Released 5 yrs ago (1/4/2019 UTC) at Vigilia Park in Tenerife - Santiago del Teide, Santa Cruz de Tenerife Spain
WILD RELEASE NOTES:
Left in the exchange shelf in reception.
