It requires patience to read and that patience, I feel, is rewarded. I was able to savour every single word of the novel, as I listened to it in audio format; before that I had already read it twice alone, and I think this last time round listening to it made me love it even more. The details are tedious only if you are in a hurry for action and don't realise how each word and detail is, in fact, linked to the whole. So many words, yet not one wasted, as far as I am concerned. By the end of the book, I was crying.
The thing I like is that Emma is not perfect; she is often not even likeable and I am not sure I would want her as a friend. However, Flaubert is masterful in that he manages to create a deep interest for this woman even though she is not perfect, but often a selfish, deluded woman. She is an extreme version, I feel, of all of us (especially women); she is out for the thrill, the drama, the kick of an affair, and cannot settle down to a mundane existence. She sees nothing beautiful in the every day- she is out for the 'big stuff', the big emotions, a kind of permanent Hollywood movie existence. Yet she is unable to achieve this, of course, and the objects of her desire are not true ones; they do not really care for her and she wouldn't notice even if they did - no one can keep up with her kind of expectations.The food she needs to feed her soul is unattainable in any normal life.
Her husband is wonderfully portrayed and again, is not perfect, but as with Emma, I feel I know him inside-out, which creates the empathy. He knows she is different, he knows deep down he cannot satisfy her. He doesn't condemn her, but tried instead to just ride along, ignoring as much as he can, until it all comes to a dreadful climax. He basically doesn't know what to do with a wife like that; again, I think, very true to real life.
Just a few thoughts...
I was touched by the book and I will be re-reading it again and again.
