—Wendy Smith
I’d better confess up front: I have always disliked Madame Bovary. I read it in English in high school, in French in college, and both times I was repelled by what I saw as Gustave Flaubert’s (1821–80) contempt for his characters. I couldn’t warm up to a novel that so mercilessly depicted its heroine—and almost everyone around her—as shallow, ignorant, selfish and greedy. Flaubert’s famous declaration, “Madame Bovary, c’est moi,” must be an example of his celebrated irony, I thought; his cold, clinical narration demonstrated not a shred of empathy.
Granted, someone whose favorite author was Charles Dickens was not necessarily the best audience for his considerably less sentimental French contemporaries. But I adored Stendhal and Balzac, also read in college, whose sardonicism was tempered by affection for at least some of their characters. Flaubert, I concluded after my second try, was one of those savage artists, like Stanley Kubrick, that I just didn’t get. Over the years, however, I realized that, although a masterpiece doesn’t change, people do, and you can grow to appreciate works of art that once seemed antipathetic. Kubrick has become one of my favorite filmmakers, for example, and when Lydia Davis’s new translation of Madame Bovary came my way, I thought I might find myself savoring Flaubert’s ruthless detachment as I had come to enjoy the black humor of Dr. Strangelove. Well, kind of. Davis, herself an acclaimed short-story writer as well as a distinguished translator, does a brilliant job of capturing Flaubert’s diamond-hard style. I don’t remember which earlier English version I read, but I do remember that it seemed antiquated as well as unpleasant. Davis’ English prose has precisely the qualities she notes that Flaubert was striving for in French; it is “clear and direct, economical and precise.” This translation reminds you what an aggressively modern writer Flaubert is: suspicious of all received wisdom, infuriated by any value system—Catholicism, rationalism—that willfully ignores the world as it really is. Sentences I had missed before now jumped out at me: “A man, at least, is free…but a woman is continually thwarted.” I still didn’t believe Flaubert much liked silly, sensual Emma Bovary, but I could see that he thoroughly understood the society that produced her. Did I like Madame Bovary better this time around? Not really, but I admired it much more. Flaubert’s courageous refusal to pander to our need for sad stories to be softened by reassuring morals, or at least tragic grandeur, ages very well indeed. He won’t lie, and he makes it very difficult for us to lie to ourselves. I’d still rather be reading Bleak House, but I get it.
—Wendy SmithPub Date: Sept. 27, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-670-02207-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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