A lush, cautionary tale of a life of vileness and deception or a loving portrait of the aesthetic impulse run rampant? Why not both? After Basil Hallward paints a beautiful, young man's portrait, his subject's frivolous wish that the picture change and he remain the same comes true. Dorian Gray's picture grows aged and corrupt while he continues to appear fresh and innocent. After he kills a young woman, "as surely as if I had cut her little throat with a knife", Dorian Gray is surprised to find no difference in his vision or surroundings. "The roses are not less lovely for all that. The birds sing just as happily in my garden."

As Hallward tries to make sense of his creation, his epigram-happy friend Lord Henry Wotton encourages Dorian in his sensual quest with any number of Wildean paradoxes, including the delightful "When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy." But despite its many languorous pleasures, The Picture of Dorian Gray is an imperfect work. Compared to the two (voyeuristic) older men, Dorian is a bore, and his search for ever new sensations far less fun than the novel's drawing-room discussions. Even more oddly, the moral message of the novel contradicts many of Wilde's supposed aims, not least "no artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style." Nonetheless, the glamour boy gets his just deserts. And Wilde, defending Dorian Gray, had it both ways: "All excess, as well as all renunciation, brings its own punishment."A lush, cautionary tale of a life of vileness and deception or a loving portrait of the aesthetic impulse run rampant? Why not both? After Basil Hallward paints a beautiful, young man's portrait, his subject's frivolous wish that the picture change and he remain the same comes true. Dorian Gray's picture grows aged and corrupt while he continues to appear fresh and innocent. After he kills a young woman, "as surely as if I had cut her little throat with a knife", Dorian Gray is surprised to find no difference in his vision or surroundings. "The roses are not less lovely for all that. The birds sing just as happily in my garden."

As Hallward tries to make sense of his creation, his epigram-happy friend Lord Henry Wotton encourages Dorian in his sensual quest with any number of Wildean paradoxes, including the delightful "When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy." But despite its many languorous pleasures, The Picture of Dorian Gray is an imperfect work. Compared to the two (voyeuristic) older men, Dorian is a bore, and his search for ever new sensations far less fun than the novel's drawing-room discussions. Even more oddly, the moral message of the novel contradicts many of Wilde's supposed aims, not least "no artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style." Nonetheless, the glamour boy gets his just deserts. And Wilde, defending Dorian Gray, had it both ways: "All excess, as well as all renunciation, brings its own punishment."

Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray, 18 Nov 2008
By now, most people are aware of the basic plot of this book: young man foolishly wishes that, upon seeing his current beateous youth captured forever in a picture, he could remain in that moment of youth forever, and the picture age in his stead. Not only that, but the picture becomes twisted and cruel as a result of the callous hedonistic behaviour perpetrated by Gray in his perpetual youth. At first, Gray is horrified, but then finds himself submitting to it...

The Picture of Dorian Gray is a fantastic novel, so fantastic that it made me sad that the eminently quoteable Wilde has only written the one. At one point, a bad-influencing friend of Dorian's lends him a novel that Gray is charmed by, a novel that tells of a man who lives a hedonistic lifestyle, with care only for pleasure and enjoyment, and it's this novel that kick-starts Gray's eventual downfall as it affects Gray's behaviour, leading him to eventually describe it as dangerous. Wilde's novel is possibly such a book: it's seductive discussions on hedonism, pleasure, and the real joys of life almost make one want to throw mores out the window and life such a life oneself, or at least wish intensely for a period that one has or could. Henry Wotton, Gray's witty, philosophical influence is a raconeteur, a man of life, who knows its pleasures and derides it's follies, chosing simply to ignore them. It's his discourses that are particularly charming and fascinating. There's obviously a temperance to his message (in terms of the whole arc of the novel), but that's almost neither here nor there. The Picture of Dorian Gray is a superb book, fascinating, witty, supremely intelligent and philosophical, romantic and gothic and chilling also. It's one of those books that might lay a bomb under your life, and it deserves its classic status.



Hard work, 09 Nov 2008
Found this book to be quite boring! The story was weak the characters dull, all in all an unenjoyable read and unnecessarily wordy.

nothing special, 22 Oct 2008
i didn't really like this book. i found all the characters quite irritating, and the story was fairly absurd and didn't really capture my imagination. more than that, i just didn't feel like there was any real depth to the book. there was nothing truly unpredictable, nothing particularly thought provoking. i don't think there's anything particularly impressive or engaging or interesting about the story. i also found wilde's style of writing so flowery, it just felt a bit fake and naff.
i don't think there's anything particularly special about this book, and i wouldn't say it's particularly worthwhile reading it.


A New Light....., 27 Sep 2008
After reading a review of "The Ripper Code" in the TLS, I had to return to my school favourite and reread it. It was fascinating to read it in a new light.

Sublime, 25 Sep 2008
I loved this book, not so much for the cautionary tale or the disintigration of Dorian's conscience, but for the beautiful philosophy embelishing the story; many of the things Henry says, for example, are interesting and thought-provoking theories on life. And I loved how youth and beauty were depicted in the book. The only criticism I would give is that it was far too short for my liking, and I thought that the part between Dorian's youth and his 38th year could've been elaborated on. Though an original, genius story!

Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray, 18 Nov 2008
By now, most people are aware of the basic plot of this book: young man foolishly wishes that, upon seeing his current beateous youth captured forever in a picture, he could remain in that moment of youth forever, and the picture age in his stead. Not only that, but the picture becomes twisted and cruel as a result of the callous hedonistic behaviour perpetrated by Gray in his perpetual youth. At first, Gray is horrified, but then finds himself submitting to it...

The Picture of Dorian Gray is a fantastic novel, so fantastic that it made me sad that the eminently quoteable Wilde has only written the one. At one point, a bad-influencing friend of Dorian's lends him a novel that Gray is charmed by, a novel that tells of a man who lives a hedonistic lifestyle, with care only for pleasure and enjoyment, and it's this novel that kick-starts Gray's eventual downfall as it affects Gray's behaviour, leading him to eventually describe it as dangerous. Wilde's novel is possibly such a book: it's seductive discussions on hedonism, pleasure, and the real joys of life almost make one want to throw mores out the window and life such a life oneself, or at least wish intensely for a period that one has or could. Henry Wotton, Gray's witty, philosophical influence is a raconeteur, a man of life, who knows its pleasures and derides it's follies, chosing simply to ignore them. It's his discourses that are particularly charming and fascinating. There's obviously a temperance to his message (in terms of the whole arc of the novel), but that's almost neither here nor there. The Picture of Dorian Gray is a superb book, fascinating, witty, supremely intelligent and philosophical, romantic and gothic and chilling also. It's one of those books that might lay a bomb under your life, and it deserves its classic status.



Hard work, 09 Nov 2008
Found this book to be quite boring! The story was weak the characters dull, all in all an unenjoyable read and unnecessarily wordy.

nothing special, 22 Oct 2008
i didn't really like this book. i found all the characters quite irritating, and the story was fairly absurd and didn't really capture my imagination. more than that, i just didn't feel like there was any real depth to the book. there was nothing truly unpredictable, nothing particularly thought provoking. i don't think there's anything particularly impressive or engaging or interesting about the story. i also found wilde's style of writing so flowery, it just felt a bit fake and naff.
i don't think there's anything particularly special about this book, and i wouldn't say it's particularly worthwhile reading it.


A New Light....., 27 Sep 2008
After reading a review of "The Ripper Code" in the TLS, I had to return to my school favourite and reread it. It was fascinating to read it in a new light.

Sublime, 25 Sep 2008
I loved this book, not so much for the cautionary tale or the disintigration of Dorian's conscience, but for the beautiful philosophy embelishing the story; many of the things Henry says, for example, are interesting and thought-provoking theories on life. And I loved how youth and beauty were depicted in the book. The only criticism I would give is that it was far too short for my liking, and I thought that the part between Dorian's youth and his 38th year could've been elaborated on. Though an original, genius story!

'What Was Lost' Has Found What Recent Novels Have Been Missing..., 21 Nov 2008
'What Was Lost' is Catherine O'Flynn's debut award-winning novel, which tells the story of Kate Meaney who mysteriously goes missing in 1984 and the resonance this has when, some twenty years later, she reappears on a CCTV camera in Green Oaks Shopping Centre. The novel considers the butterfly effect of Kate's disappearance on the lives of Kurt, a security guard, and Lisa, a shop manager, who in 2004 find themselves trapped in unfulfilling roles at Green Oaks. This is the stage where the story's drama unfolds and the common denominator between all the characters and sub-stories within the novel - all the losses relate to the shopping centre and the retail future its represents at the expense of a previous way of life.

The novel opens in 1984, with the narrative painting the world through the eyes of child-detective Kate, a lonely ten year old who has lost her place even before her official disappearance. The skill with which O'Flynn depicts the naïve and honest perceptions of childhood and loneliness is highly commendable, and when the story jumps after some sixty pages to 2004, I found myself touched by a personal sense of loss for the character. However, despite my initial reluctance to shift perspectives, the portrayals of Lisa and Kurt proved to be no less absorbing, and it is in this future that one encounters a number of the walk-on roles of customers, whose obstinacies and misfortunes are a joy to read. The book moves rapidly from moments of laugh-out-loud ridicule to lump-in-your-throat compassion, all the while revealing clues to solve the mystery of the lost girl.

Touching base with both humour and heartbreak, often in quick succession, for me the strength of O'Flynn's writing lies in her uncanny ability of perception and the accuracy with which she depicts all the lives in the story. A definite highlight would be the sporadic and unrelated monologues offered by customers who have visited the shopping centre and her poignant portraits of employees or visitors, all of which seem to connect with an essential truth of humanity. On other occasions throughout the novel, O'Flynn explores the idea of speech, with certain scenes comprising entirely of scripted conversation to great effect.

The book has surprising relevance to contemporary current affairs, and the conclusion skilfully wove all the threads of the story together in an unexpected and remarkable resolution. Rarely, if ever, does a book successfully manipulate elements of humour, romance, mystery and ghost-story together in an honest yet enthralling way, yet this is exactly what is achieved in 'What Was Lost'.



Good first novel but nowhere as good as the hype, 03 Nov 2008
'Crime was out there. Undetected, unseen. She hoped she wouldn't be too late'.

The story revolves around a little girl who is orphaned and carries on (obsessively) playing detective. The writing in this first part of the book is very engaging and although I found the child's life somewhat unconvincing I was very happy to suspend disbelief and enjoy.

The narrative then moves on twenty years and we take up with minor characters from the first story years later in the shopping centre where she disappeared. There is good writing here too but the book loses its way and as other reviewers have noted you can tell it's a first novel. Other reviewers think the ending was masterful - I thought it weak.

I look forward to further books from Ms O'Flynn as she is clearly a talented writer though for me this novel is structurally flawed.

read it in a day, 10 Oct 2008
LOved IT, loved the narration - loved the jokes ( had to stop myself laughing as i was reading it at work)
loved the Quinton and steri refs

presume was based on MErry Hill
well done Catherine!

OK, 16 Sep 2008
I picked this up in my local Tesco the other day, thought it looked intriguing but although it was nicely written it failed to excite me. I thought the early part about Kate and her detective agency was quite funny, and perceptive, the eyes of a child were well depicted, but when it moved into the present day I lost interest really. Skipped some of it to get to the end to find out what actually happened to Kate and Adrian, average book.

Beautifully written, 02 Sep 2008
Contrary to at least one other review, I find the character of Kate the pre-teen detective very convincing, wonderfully drawn, and like several other characters in this wonderfully written novel, achingly sad.

There is something of Joanne Harris in the spareness of the prose here, deceptively simple, clean, uncomplicated, but flowing.

The plot is perhaps thin in places, and certainly the conclusion is not entirely convincing, but it feels rather like an excuse to produce some of these fine characters. Like many an early novel, you suspect more than a hint of autobiography as well.

A lovely read.

Athena College was snoozing complacently in the Berkshires until Coleman Silk--formerly "Silky Silk", undefeated welterweight pro-boxer--strode in and shook the place awake. This faculty dean sacked the deadwood, made lots of hot new hires, including Yale-spawned literary-theory wunderkind Delphine Roux, and irritated so many people for so many decades that now, in 1998, they have all turned on him. Silk's character assassination is partly owing to what the novel's narrator, Nathan Zuckerman, calls "the Devil of the Little Place--the gossip, the jealousy, the acrimony, the boredom, the lies".

But shocking, intensely dramatised events precipitate Silk's crisis. He remarks of two students who never showed up for class, "Do they exist or are they spooks?" They turn out to be black, and lodge a bogus charge of racism exploited by his enemies. Then, at 71, Viagra catapults Silk into "the perpetual state of emergency that is sexual intoxication", and he ignites an affair with an illiterate janitor, Faunia Farley, 34. She's got a sharp sensibility, "the laugh of a barmaid who keeps a baseball bat at her feet in case of trouble", and a melancholy voluptuousness. "I'm back in the tornado", Silk exults. His campus persecutors burn him for it--and his main betrayer is Delphine Roux.

In a short space, it's tough to convey the gale-force quality of Silk's rants, or the odd effect of Zuckerman's narration, alternately retrospective and torrentially in the moment. The flashbacks to Silk's youth in New Jersey are just as important as his turbulent forced retirement, because it turns out that for his entire adult life, Silk has been covering up the fact that he is a black man. (If this seems implausible, consider that the famous New York Times book critic Anatole Broyard did the same thing.) Young Silk rejects both the racism that bars him from Woolworth's counter and the Negro solidarity of Howard University. "Neither the they of Woolworth's nor the we of Howard" is for Coleman Silk. "Instead the raw I with all its agility. Self-discovery--that was the punch to the labonz.... Self-knowledge but concealed. What is as powerful as that?"

Silk's contradictions power a great Philip Roth novel, but he's not the only character who packs a punch. Faunia, brutally abused by her Vietnam vet husband (a sketchy guy who seems to have wandered in from a lesser Russell Banks novel), scarred by the death of her kids, is one of Roth's best female characters ever. The self-serving Delphine Roux is intriguingly (and convincingly) nutty, and any number of minor characters pop in, mouth off, kick ass, and vanish, leaving a vivid sense of human passion and perversity behind. You might call it a stain. --Tim Appelo Athena College was snoozing complacently in the Berkshires until Coleman Silk strode in and shook the place awake. This faculty dean sacked the deadwood, made lots of hot new hires, including Yale-spawned literary-theory wunderkind Delphine Roux, and pissed off so many people for so many decades that now, in 1998, they've all turned on him. Silk's character assassination is partly owing to what the novel's narrator, Nathan Zuckerman, calls "the Devil of the Little Place--the gossip, the jealousy, the acrimony, the boredom, the lies". But shocking, intensely dramatised events precipitate Silk's crisis. He remarks of two students who never showed up for class, "Do they exist or are they spooks?" They turn out to be black, and lodge a bogus charge of racism exploited by his enemies. Then, at 71, Viagra catapults Silk into "the perpetual state of emergency that is sexual intoxication", and he ignites an affair with an illiterate janitor, Faunia Farley, 34. She's got a sharp sensibility, "the laugh of a barmaid who keeps a baseball bat at her feet in case of trouble," and a melancholy voluptuousness. "I'm back in the tornado," Silk exults. His campus persecutors burn him for it--and his main betrayer is Delphine Roux.

The flashbacks to Silk's youth in New Jersey become just as important as his turbulent-forced retirement when he reveals a secret that he has been hiding his entire adult life and Silk's contradictions power a great Philip Roth novel, but he's not the only character who packs a punch. Faunia, brutally abused by her Vietnam vet husband, scarred by the death of her kids, is one of Roth's best female characters ever. The self-serving Delphine Roux is intriguingly (and convincingly) nutty, and any number of minor characters pop in, mouth off and vanish, leaving a vivid sense of human passion and perversity behind. You might call it a stain. --Tim Appelo

Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray, 18 Nov 2008
By now, most people are aware of the basic plot of this book: young man foolishly wishes that, upon seeing his current beateous youth captured forever in a picture, he could remain in that moment of youth forever, and the picture age in his stead. Not only that, but the picture becomes twisted and cruel as a result of the callous hedonistic behaviour perpetrated by Gray in his perpetual youth. At first, Gray is horrified, but then finds himself submitting to it...

The Picture of Dorian Gray is a fantastic novel, so fantastic that it made me sad that the eminently quoteable Wilde has only written the one. At one point, a bad-influencing friend of Dorian's lends him a novel that Gray is charmed by, a novel that tells of a man who lives a hedonistic lifestyle, with care only for pleasure and enjoyment, and it's this novel that kick-starts Gray's eventual downfall as it affects Gray's behaviour, leading him to eventually describe it as dangerous. Wilde's novel is possibly such a book: it's seductive discussions on hedonism, pleasure, and the real joys of life almost make one want to throw mores out the window and life such a life oneself, or at least wish intensely for a period that one has or could. Henry Wotton, Gray's witty, philosophical influence is a raconeteur, a man of life, who knows its pleasures and derides it's follies, chosing simply to ignore them. It's his discourses that are particularly charming and fascinating. There's obviously a temperance to his message (in terms of the whole arc of the novel), but that's almost neither here nor there. The Picture of Dorian Gray is a superb book, fascinating, witty, supremely intelligent and philosophical, romantic and gothic and chilling also. It's one of those books that might lay a bomb under your life, and it deserves its classic status.



Hard work, 09 Nov 2008
Found this book to be quite boring! The story was weak the characters dull, all in all an unenjoyable read and unnecessarily wordy.

nothing special, 22 Oct 2008
i didn't really like this book. i found all the characters quite irritating, and the story was fairly absurd and didn't really capture my imagination. more than that, i just didn't feel like there was any real depth to the book. there was nothing truly unpredictable, nothing particularly thought provoking. i don't think there's anything particularly impressive or engaging or interesting about the story. i also found wilde's style of writing so flowery, it just felt a bit fake and naff.
i don't think there's anything particularly special about this book, and i wouldn't say it's particularly worthwhile reading it.


A New Light....., 27 Sep 2008
After reading a review of "The Ripper Code" in the TLS, I had to return to my school favourite and reread it. It was fascinating to read it in a new light.

Sublime, 25 Sep 2008
I loved this book, not so much for the cautionary tale or the disintigration of Dorian's conscience, but for the beautiful philosophy embelishing the story; many of the things Henry says, for example, are interesting and thought-provoking theories on life. And I loved how youth and beauty were depicted in the book. The only criticism I would give is that it was far too short for my liking, and I thought that the part between Dorian's youth and his 38th year could've been elaborated on. Though an original, genius story!

'What Was Lost' Has Found What Recent Novels Have Been Missing..., 21 Nov 2008
'What Was Lost' is Catherine O'Flynn's debut award-winning novel, which tells the story of Kate Meaney who mysteriously goes missing in 1984 and the resonance this has when, some twenty years later, she reappears on a CCTV camera in Green Oaks Shopping Centre. The novel considers the butterfly effect of Kate's disappearance on the lives of Kurt, a security guard, and Lisa, a shop manager, who in 2004 find themselves trapped in unfulfilling roles at Green Oaks. This is the stage where the story's drama unfolds and the common denominator between all the characters and sub-stories within the novel - all the losses relate to the shopping centre and the retail future its represents at the expense of a previous way of life.

The novel opens in 1984, with the narrative painting the world through the eyes of child-detective Kate, a lonely ten year old who has lost her place even before her official disappearance. The skill with which O'Flynn depicts the naïve and honest perceptions of childhood and loneliness is highly commendable, and when the story jumps after some sixty pages to 2004, I found myself touched by a personal sense of loss for the character. However, despite my initial reluctance to shift perspectives, the portrayals of Lisa and Kurt proved to be no less absorbing, and it is in this future that one encounters a number of the walk-on roles of customers, whose obstinacies and misfortunes are a joy to read. The book moves rapidly from moments of laugh-out-loud ridicule to lump-in-your-throat compassion, all the while revealing clues to solve the mystery of the lost girl.

Touching base with both humour and heartbreak, often in quick succession, for me the strength of O'Flynn's writing lies in her uncanny ability of perception and the accuracy with which she depicts all the lives in the story. A definite highlight would be the sporadic and unrelated monologues offered by customers who have visited the shopping centre and her poignant portraits of employees or visitors, all of which seem to connect with an essential truth of humanity. On other occasions throughout the novel, O'Flynn explores the idea of speech, with certain scenes comprising entirely of scripted conversation to great effect.

The book has surprising relevance to contemporary current affairs, and the conclusion skilfully wove all the threads of the story together in an unexpected and remarkable resolution. Rarely, if ever, does a book successfully manipulate elements of humour, romance, mystery and ghost-story together in an honest yet enthralling way, yet this is exactly what is achieved in 'What Was Lost'.



Good first novel but nowhere as good as the hype, 03 Nov 2008
'Crime was out there. Undetected, unseen. She hoped she wouldn't be too late'.

The story revolves around a little girl who is orphaned and carries on (obsessively) playing detective. The writing in this first part of the book is very engaging and although I found the child's life somewhat unconvincing I was very happy to suspend disbelief and enjoy.

The narrative then moves on twenty years and we take up with minor characters from the first story years later in the shopping centre where she disappeared. There is good writing here too but the book loses its way and as other reviewers have noted you can tell it's a first novel. Other reviewers think the ending was masterful - I thought it weak.

I look forward to further books from Ms O'Flynn as she is clearly a talented writer though for me this novel is structurally flawed.

read it in a day, 10 Oct 2008
LOved IT, loved the narration - loved the jokes ( had to stop myself laughing as i was reading it at work)
loved the Quinton and steri refs

presume was based on MErry Hill
well done Catherine!

OK, 16 Sep 2008
I picked this up in my local Tesco the other day, thought it looked intriguing but although it was nicely written it failed to excite me. I thought the early part about Kate and her detective agency was quite funny, and perceptive, the eyes of a child were well depicted, but when it moved into the present day I lost interest really. Skipped some of it to get to the end to find out what actually happened to Kate and Adrian, average book.

Beautifully written, 02 Sep 2008
Contrary to at least one other review, I find the character of Kate the pre-teen detective very convincing, wonderfully drawn, and like several other characters in this wonderfully written novel, achingly sad.

There is something of Joanne Harris in the spareness of the prose here, deceptively simple, clean, uncomplicated, but flowing.

The plot is perhaps thin in places, and certainly the conclusion is not entirely convincing, but it feels rather like an excuse to produce some of these fine characters. Like many an early novel, you suspect more than a hint of autobiography as well.

A lovely read.

Mixed feelings, 05 May 2008
Let me just start with the silliest comment: the only way to find out whether you like this book or not, is by reading it. Most reviews here and on Amazon.com reflect ambivalent feelings. After turning the last page, mine was not altogether negative, but not entirely positive either. This was also my first book by Philip Roth.

Ageing but vigorous professor Coleman Silk is accused of racism in the classroom and forcefully rejecting it (in vain), he chooses to retire after a long, fulfilling and esteemed teaching career. His tale is told by his friend, writer Nathan Zuckerman. Hardly acknowledging each other for years, a friendship begins and Zuckerman tries to understand the multiple facets defining Silk's personality. Unbeknownst to him, he will later discover a secret that Silk has kept for decades, a secret which his life had been, and still is, based on.

Looping around the main theme, there are other characters who are connected with Silk and bear relevance. In the background, Coleman's parents and siblings. Their beginnings, the struggles to send all their children to proper schools for the best education possible. We then have his wife, a strong, independent personality who died during the `racism ordeal', and their four adult children (it's 1998 by then). Silk's bursting rage and pain towards these two -to him- related events (the accusations and his wife's death), find a degree of comfort through the acquaintance -later developing into something much more- of Faunia, a janitor in the Athena college where he used to teach. Faunia, a tormented soul herself, does not seem to be left alone by her ex-husband, Les, who keeps stalking her after a terrible tragedy struck at their home some years previously. Some other characters from the past who are irretrievably connected with Coleman, pop into the picture. His former girlfriend, Steena, met and loved in his twenties. The young French dean at Athena, Dolphine Roux, who supported the racism accusations. Zuckerman himself finds a niche for some of his personal details.

So many people, so many different personalities, so many tragedies. This book explores a variety of themes -race, rape, depression, death, loneliness- which make it certainly for a substantial, full-of-texture read. It also speaks of love, love for a profession, for a person, for life in general, but the intricacy with which the author interpolates this concept is open to debate. This is why I cannot define in full its identifying quality, or, for that matter, what exactly I did not like about this book. Perhaps a certain dislike for the structure of some of the chapters: sentences which do not see a full stop, a pause, for an entire page for example. This rendered the read a bit tedious. Also, I found the numerous references to the Clinton/Lewinski's `interlude' somewhat irrelevant to the core of the story and if the purpose was to pinpoint that Silk's own story began to unfold back then, in 1998, well, it was clear enough already. Not to mention the final paragraphs -and this is not a spoiler- when an incredible and unrealistic conversation ensues in a cemetery. I mean, was that to supply the reader with some final `answers' -which could not have been `real' anyway since it was all a mental image?- .

And yet. Coleman Silk is a personage. And his secret, the secret from which we are often distracted due to a number of superimposed, unnecessary (to me) details, is the central theme of this book. Like it or not, mixed feelings or not, I've never written such a long review before. There must be a reason, although I myself am not sure what that is. What I am sure about is that this tale is so imbued with wrenching issues that it cannot fail to dazzle, provoke and stimulate conversations.



Very putdownable, 28 Mar 2008
The premise and the promise is great, but the book fails to impress. This book has two of Roth's favourite preoccupations - sex and the experience of the Jewish man in America - in abundance. This was also very important material for Everyman, whereas the latter is an absolute tour de force this is a tour to nowehere, via a fairly dull and lengthy scenic route that I did not even wish to complete. One of the main problems with this book is the detachment I experience from its central character Coleman Silk. I would rather that he had delivered this narrative first hand. Instead it is delivered by Roth's alter ego Nathan Zuckerman. Another problem is the huge amount of words and energy invested in to building character and "backstory" (that awful new expression) for characters that really turn out to be not very important. Dare I accuse the great Roth of this (and he IS sometimes great) but much of this seems to be padding. Indeed, you get the feeing that Roth is writing too much and that half of his output of the last 10 years would be more than sufficient. Everyman is wonderful and so to supposedly, is American Pastoral. Both are enough to secure his reputation in the pantheon of great American novelists - as if he needed anyone to reassure him - and that's not mentioning Goodbye Columbus, Portnoy's Complaint and the 20 plus other novels he has written. Although this book has plenty of interesting things to say about political correctness gone mad and issues of race and racism, I found that I was left wanting to get properly inside the head of Coleman Silk but with the narrative stucture and device employed, this proved impossible.

Remarkably captivating, 15 Feb 2008
Here are sentences like paragraphs and paragraphs like chapters which have a tendency to exasperate. That said, this is actually a great read. Zuckerman, the writer again, has an assignment of profound consequence. An association with Coleman allows us to see a retrospective unfolding scene to the inevitable. There is no especial mystery, yet the novel is remarkably captivating. Some characters are witnessed second hand, but this does not matter, for that is part of the well developed construction. Ideas are aplenty with lots of rich pages of impressive brilliance.


A primer for the soul, 22 Nov 2007
I've long since learned to be sceptical of the hyberbolic quotes that decorate the covers of books. So when I read the Sunday Telegraph's summary of The Human Stain as 'The work of a genius at full throttle' I anticipated disappointment. But within only a few pages their assessment became a statement of fact rather than opinion.

It would have been absurd for Roth to call his novel 'The Human Condition', and yet he reasonably could have. In these three hundred and fifty or so pages he describes with cruel precision the human need to tell stories and lies about ourselves and each other - stories and lies which together ensure that all human interaction is at cross purposes. 'Intention? Motive? Consequence? Meaning?' he writes. 'All that we don't know is astonishing. Even more astonishing is what passes for knowing.'

Through the story of Coleman Silk, a man whose anger at being wronged is amplified to the point of near madness by the knowledge of his own secret wrongs, Roth shines a bitterly bright spotlight on the assumptions we make about others, and on the assumptions we try to make others have of us. The Human Stain is a tragedy of epic proportions - with all the pain, irony, misunderstanding and revelation that suggests. The twists of the plot are like the twists of the knife as he skewers human frailty, prejudice and self-deception.

I read this book very slowly - not because it is hard work (it is in fact an electrifying page-turner) - but because the brilliance of the prose and the richness of the insight makes it sometimes feel like a primer for the soul - and to miss a sentence might be to miss an insight one should never forget. So, for example, buried deep mid-paragraph, in the middle of the book, Roth almost casually encapsulates the thesis of the novel: '...we leave a stain, we leave a trail, we leave our imprint. Impurity, cruelty, abuse, error, excrement, semen - there's no other way to be here. Nothing to do with disobedience. Nothing to do with grace or salvation or redemption. It's in everyone. Indwelling. Inherent. Defining. The stain that is there before its mark.'

Lately I have felt weary of the over conceptualised and plodding earnestness of so much contemporary literary fiction, and this book singlehandedly made me fall in love again with the act and purpose of reading. It is a book that makes you want to gasp at the beauty of language in the hands of a master-craftsman, and that leaves you feeling wiser about yourself, and everyone else - even if that wisdom is deep, dark and desperate.

Identity politics and political correctness as manifestations of American insecurity, 11 Oct 2007
The central premise in Philip Roth's fulminating diatribe against the maladies of modern America is very flimsy and yet it works, probably because of its flimsiness. The pity is that I can't state it clearly here without spoiling the plot, though other reviewers have done so.
Narrated by Nathan Zuckerman, Roth's alter ego, the story revolves around the life of Coleman Silk, the autocratic Dean of Faculty in a small town New England university. Pressured and humiliated into quitting his academic position as a result of an unintentional racial double entendre he blames the subsequent death of his wife on the affair. Seething with resentment and seeking revenge on those within the university who remained silent or actively collaborated in his demise, he finally takes up with a badly damaged, poorly educated backwater girl half his age who is being stalked by her psychotic ex-Nam war vet ex-husband. Silk's life becomes increasingly precarious and complicated, resulting in the inevitable denouement. We learn later that throughout his adult life he had harboured a personal secret (out of self-interest) which made his humiliation almost laughably ironic.
Roth tackles major issues (political correctness, identity politics, racial prejudice, overseas adventurism, dumb education and dumb culture) against a backdrop of an extremely trivial one (the Clinton-Lewinsky affair) and it is a risky undertaking in modern America because of the very issues he is attacking. In particular he lays himself open to claims of cryptic racism but that would be a false claim. The action taken by Coleman Silk is not new; it is one that has been used by American Jews and English working-class men in the past as a means of personal progress and is merely a damning statement about the social climate and pressures of certain societies at certain periods in their history. It has nothing to do with personal shame or self-loathing.
There is some terrific characterisation, notably of Silk himself, his nemesis Faunia Farley, her deranged husband Lester, and Delphine Roux, the alienated French academic hired by Silk, an action that he came to regret. You genuinely come to understand their individual motivations, foibles, weaknesses and neuroses as a result. The writing is dense yet fast-paced and angry. This is the best novel I have read so far published in the current century.

Flaubert's "Madame Bovary" scandalised French bourgeois society of the time with its shocking depiction of an adulteress, Emma Bovary, and her lascivious liaisons. The 19th-century press denounced both the book and its author as corrupting influences. History has exonerated Flaubert and exposed the hypocrisy of a society that would deny the existence of such women.

Emma Bovary, a young woman, newly married to a provincial doctor, is dazzled when she attends her first ball, attended by high aristocracy. With the culmination of her romantic ideals realised, her head is so filled with fanciful notions that she never re-enters reality, until the damning end:

Before her wedding day, she had thought she was in love; but since she lacked the happiness that should have come from that love, she must have been mistaken, she fancied. And Emma sought to find out exactly what was meant in real life by the words felicity, passion and rapture, which had seemed so fine on the pages of the books.

Frustrated and bored by her marriage, Emma embarks on a brief, rather touching affair with one young man but soon, vulnerable and exposed, she is fitting carrion for Monsieor Rodolphe, a serial womaniser. Soon, Emma has not only ruined her own reputation but destroyed that of her husband in her ruthless bid for wealth and recognition. The cast of characters, from passers-by to the shopkeepers who take her money, act like the chorus in a Greek tragedy. Seen through their eyes and their reactions to her, Emma's downfall is recounted but also society's intolerance.

On the surface, Flaubert provides a melodramatic morality tale. Slyly, underneath it all, he is laughing. Through his voyeuristic tale, with each salacious detail recounted, he is wilfully subversive as he points the finger not only at the guilty but at those who would dare to judge. --Nicola Perry

Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray, 18 Nov 2008
By now, most people are aware of the basic plot of this book: young man foolishly wishes that, upon seeing his current beateous youth captured forever in a picture, he could remain in that moment of youth forever, and the picture age in his stead. Not only that, but the picture becomes twisted and cruel as a result of the callous hedonistic behaviour perpetrated by Gray in his perpetual youth. At first, Gray is horrified, but then finds himself submitting to it...

The Picture of Dorian Gray is a fantastic novel, so fantastic that it made me sad that the eminently quoteable Wilde has only written the one. At one point, a bad-influencing friend of Dorian's lends him a novel that Gray is charmed by, a novel that tells of a man who lives a hedonistic lifestyle, with care only for pleasure and enjoyment, and it's this novel that kick-starts Gray's eventual downfall as it affects Gray's behaviour, leading him to eventually describe it as dangerous. Wilde's novel is possibly such a book: it's seductive discussions on hedonism, pleasure, and the real joys of life almost make one want to throw mores out the window and life such a life oneself, or at least wish intensely for a period that one has or could. Henry Wotton, Gray's witty, philosophical influence is a raconeteur, a man of life, who knows its pleasures and derides it's follies, chosing simply to ignore them. It's his discourses that are particularly charming and fascinating. There's obviously a temperance to his message (in terms of the whole arc of the novel), but that's almost neither here nor there. The Picture of Dorian Gray is a superb book, fascinating, witty, supremely intelligent and philosophical, romantic and gothic and chilling also. It's one of those books that might lay a bomb under your life, and it deserves its classic status.



Hard work, 09 Nov 2008
Found this book to be quite boring! The story was weak the characters dull, all in all an unenjoyable read and unnecessarily wordy.

nothing special, 22 Oct 2008
i didn't really like this book. i found all the characters quite irritating, and the story was fairly absurd and didn't really capture my imagination. more than that, i just didn't feel like there was any real depth to the book. there was nothing truly unpredictable, nothing particularly thought provoking. i don't think there's anything particularly impressive or engaging or interesting about the story. i also found wilde's style of writing so flowery, it just felt a bit fake and naff.
i don't think there's anything particularly special about this book, and i wouldn't say it's particularly worthwhile reading it.


A New Light....., 27 Sep 2008
After reading a review of "The Ripper Code" in the TLS, I had to return to my school favourite and reread it. It was fascinating to read it in a new light.

Sublime, 25 Sep 2008
I loved this book, not so much for the cautionary tale or the disintigration of Dorian's conscience, but for the beautiful philosophy embelishing the story; many of the things Henry says, for example, are interesting and thought-provoking theories on life. And I loved how youth and beauty were depicted in the book. The only criticism I would give is that it was far too short for my liking, and I thought that the part between Dorian's youth and his 38th year could've been elaborated on. Though an original, genius story!

'What Was Lost' Has Found What Recent Novels Have Been Missing..., 21 Nov 2008
'What Was Lost' is Catherine O'Flynn's debut award-winning novel, which tells the story of Kate Meaney who mysteriously goes missing in 1984 and the resonance this has when, some twenty years later, she reappears on a CCTV camera in Green Oaks Shopping Centre. The novel considers the butterfly effect of Kate's disappearance on the lives of Kurt, a security guard, and Lisa, a shop manager, who in 2004 find themselves trapped in unfulfilling roles at Green Oaks. This is the stage where the story's drama unfolds and the common denominator between all the characters and sub-stories within the novel - all the losses relate to the shopping centre and the retail future its represents at the expense of a previous way of life.

The novel opens in 1984, with the narrative painting the world through the eyes of child-detective Kate, a lonely ten year old who has lost her place even before her official disappearance. The skill with which O'Flynn depicts the naïve and honest perceptions of childhood and loneliness is highly commendable, and when the story jumps after some sixty pages to 2004, I found myself touched by a personal sense of loss for the character. However, despite my initial reluctance to shift perspectives, the portrayals of Lisa and Kurt proved to be no less absorbing, and it is in this future that one encounters a number of the walk-on roles of customers, whose obstinacies and misfortunes are a joy to read. The book moves rapidly from moments of laugh-out-loud ridicule to lump-in-your-throat compassion, all the while revealing clues to solve the mystery of the lost girl.

Touching base with both humour and heartbreak, often in quick succession, for me the strength of O'Flynn's writing lies in her uncanny ability of perception and the accuracy with which she depicts all the lives in the story. A definite highlight would be the sporadic and unrelated monologues offered by customers who have visited the shopping centre and her poignant portraits of employees or visitors, all of which seem to connect with an essential truth of humanity. On other occasions throughout the novel, O'Flynn explores the idea of speech, with certain scenes comprising entirely of scripted conversation to great effect.

The book has surprising relevance to contemporary current affairs, and the conclusion skilfully wove all the threads of the story together in an unexpected and remarkable resolution. Rarely, if ever, does a book successfully manipulate elements of humour, romance, mystery and ghost-story together in an honest yet enthralling way, yet this is exactly what is achieved in 'What Was Lost'.



Good first novel but nowhere as good as the hype, 03 Nov 2008
'Crime was out there. Undetected, unseen. She hoped she wouldn't be too late'.

The story revolves around a little girl who is orphaned and carries on (obsessively) playing detective. The writing in this first part of the book is very engaging and although I found the child's life somewhat unconvincing I was very happy to suspend disbelief and enjoy.

The narrative then moves on twenty years and we take up with minor characters from the first story years later in the shopping centre where she disappeared. There is good writing here too but the book loses its way and as other reviewers have noted you can tell it's a first novel. Other reviewers think the ending was masterful - I thought it weak.

I look forward to further books from Ms O'Flynn as she is clearly a talented writer though for me this novel is structurally flawed.

read it in a day, 10 Oct 2008
LOved IT, loved the narration - loved the jokes ( had to stop myself laughing as i was reading it at work)
loved the Quinton and steri refs

presume was based on MErry Hill
well done Catherine!

OK, 16 Sep 2008
I picked this up in my local Tesco the other day, thought it looked intriguing but although it was nicely written it failed to excite me. I thought the early part about Kate and her detective agency was quite funny, and perceptive, the eyes of a child were well depicted, but when it moved into the present day I lost interest really. Skipped some of it to get to the end to find out what actually happened to Kate and Adrian, average book.

Beautifully written, 02 Sep 2008
Contrary to at least one other review, I find the character of Kate the pre-teen detective very convincing, wonderfully drawn, and like several other characters in this wonderfully written novel, achingly sad.

There is something of Joanne Harris in the spareness of the prose here, deceptively simple, clean, uncomplicated, but flowing.

The plot is perhaps thin in places, and certainly the conclusion is not entirely convincing, but it feels rather like an excuse to produce some of these fine characters. Like many an early novel, you suspect more than a hint of autobiography as well.

A lovely read.

Mixed feelings, 05 May 2008
Let me just start with the silliest comment: the only way to find out whether you like this book or not, is by reading it. Most reviews here and on Amazon.com reflect ambivalent feelings. After turning the last page, mine was not altogether negative, but not entirely positive either. This was also my first book by Philip Roth.

Ageing but vigorous professor Coleman Silk is accused of racism in the classroom and forcefully rejecting it (in vain), he chooses to retire after a long, fulfilling and esteemed teaching career. His tale is told by his friend, writer Nathan Zuckerman. Hardly acknowledging each other for years, a friendship begins and Zuckerman tries to understand the multiple facets defining Silk's personality. Unbeknownst to him, he will later discover a secret that Silk has kept for decades, a secret which his life had been, and still is, based on.

Looping around the main theme, there are other characters who are connected with Silk and bear relevance. In the background, Coleman's parents and siblings. Their beginnings, the struggles to send all their children to proper schools for the best education possible. We then have his wife, a strong, independent personality who died during the `racism ordeal', and their four adult children (it's 1998 by then). Silk's bursting rage and pain towards these two -to him- related events (the accusations and his wife's death), find a degree of comfort through the acquaintance -later developing into something much more- of Faunia, a janitor in the Athena college where he used to teach. Faunia, a tormented soul herself, does not seem to be left alone by her ex-husband, Les, who keeps stalking her after a terrible tragedy struck at their home some years previously. Some other characters from the past who are irretrievably connected with Coleman, pop into the picture. His former girlfriend, Steena, met and loved in his twenties. The young French dean at Athena, Dolphine Roux, who supported the racism accusations. Zuckerman himself finds a niche for some of his personal details.

So many people, so many different personalities, so many tragedies. This book explores a variety of themes -race, rape, depression, death, loneliness- which make it certainly for a substantial, full-of-texture read. It also speaks of love, love for a profession, for a person, for life in general, but the intricacy with which the author interpolates this concept is open to debate. This is why I cannot define in full its identifying quality, or, for that matter, what exactly I did not like about this book. Perhaps a certain dislike for the structure of some of the chapters: sentences which do not see a full stop, a pause, for an entire page for example. This rendered the read a bit tedious. Also, I found the numerous references to the Clinton/Lewinski's `interlude' somewhat irrelevant to the core of the story and if the purpose was to pinpoint that Silk's own story began to unfold back then, in 1998, well, it was clear enough already. Not to mention the final paragraphs -and this is not a spoiler- when an incredible and unrealistic conversation ensues in a cemetery. I mean, was that to supply the reader with some final `answers' -which could not have been `real' anyway since it was all a mental image?- .

And yet. Coleman Silk is a personage. And his secret, the secret from which we are often distracted due to a number of superimposed, unnecessary (to me) details, is the central theme of this book. Like it or not, mixed feelings or not, I've never written such a long review before. There must be a reason, although I myself am not sure what that is. What I am sure about is that this tale is so imbued with wrenching issues that it cannot fail to dazzle, provoke and stimulate conversations.



Very putdownable, 28 Mar 2008
The premise and the promise is great, but the book fails to impress. This book has two of Roth's favourite preoccupations - sex and the experience of the Jewish man in America - in abundance. This was also very important material for Everyman, whereas the latter is an absolute tour de force this is a tour to nowehere, via a fairly dull and lengthy scenic route that I did not even wish to complete. One of the main problems with this book is the detachment I experience from its central character Coleman Silk. I would rather that he had delivered this narrative first hand. Instead it is delivered by Roth's alter ego Nathan Zuckerman. Another problem is the huge amount of words and energy invested in to building character and "backstory" (that awful new expression) for characters that really turn out to be not very important. Dare I accuse the great Roth of this (and he IS sometimes great) but much of this seems to be padding. Indeed, you get the feeing that Roth is writing too much and that half of his output of the last 10 years would be more than sufficient. Everyman is wonderful and so to supposedly, is American Pastoral. Both are enough to secure his reputation in the pantheon of great American novelists - as if he needed anyone to reassure him - and that's not mentioning Goodbye Columbus, Portnoy's Complaint and the 20 plus other novels he has written. Although this book has plenty of interesting things to say about political correctness gone mad and issues of race and racism, I found that I was left wanting to get properly inside the head of Coleman Silk but with the narrative stucture and device employed, this proved impossible.

Remarkably captivating, 15 Feb 2008
Here are sentences like paragraphs and paragraphs like chapters which have a tendency to exasperate. That said, this is actually a great read. Zuckerman, the writer again, has an assignment of profound consequence. An association with Coleman allows us to see a retrospective unfolding scene to the inevitable. There is no especial mystery, yet the novel is remarkably captivating. Some characters are witnessed second hand, but this does not matter, for that is part of the well developed construction. Ideas are aplenty with lots of rich pages of impressive brilliance.


A primer for the soul, 22 Nov 2007
I've long since learned to be sceptical of the hyberbolic quotes that decorate the covers of books. So when I read the Sunday Telegraph's summary of The Human Stain as 'The work of a genius at full throttle' I anticipated disappointment. But within only a few pages their assessment became a statement of fact rather than opinion.

It would have been absurd for Roth to call his novel 'The Human Condition', and yet he reasonably could have. In these three hundred and fifty or so pages he describes with cruel precision the human need to tell stories and lies about ourselves and each other - stories and lies which together ensure that all human interaction is at cross purposes. 'Intention? Motive? Consequence? Meaning?' he writes. 'All that we don't know is astonishing. Even more astonishing is what passes for knowing.'

Through the story of Coleman Silk, a man whose anger at being wronged is amplified to the point of near madness by the knowledge of his own secret wrongs, Roth shines a bitterly bright spotlight on the assumptions we make about others, and on the assumptions we try to make others have of us. The Human Stain is a tragedy of epic proportions - with all the pain, irony, misunderstanding and revelation that suggests. The twists of the plot are like the twists of the knife as he skewers human frailty, prejudice and self-deception.

I read this book very slowly - not because it is hard work (it is in fact an electrifying page-turner) - but because the brilliance of the prose and the richness of the insight makes it sometimes feel like a primer for the soul - and to miss a sentence might be to miss an insight one should never forget. So, for example, buried deep mid-paragraph, in the middle of the book, Roth almost casually encapsulates the thesis of the novel: '...we leave a stain, we leave a trail, we leave our imprint. Impurity, cruelty, abuse, error, excrement, semen - there's no other way to be here. Nothing to do with disobedience. Nothing to do with grace or salvation or redemption. It's in everyone. Indwelling. Inherent. Defining. The stain that is there before its mark.'

Lately I have felt weary of the over conceptualised and plodding earnestness of so much contemporary literary fiction, and this book singlehandedly made me fall in love again with the act and purpose of reading. It is a book that makes you want to gasp at the beauty of language in the hands of a master-craftsman, and that leaves you feeling wiser about yourself, and everyone else - even if that wisdom is deep, dark and desperate.

Identity politics and political correctness as manifestations of American insecurity, 11 Oct 2007
The central premise in Philip Roth's fulminating diatribe against the maladies of modern America is very flimsy and yet it works, probably because of its flimsiness. The pity is that I can't state it clearly here without spoiling the plot, though other reviewers have done so.
Narrated by Nathan Zuckerman, Roth's alter ego, the story revolves around the life of Coleman Silk, the autocratic Dean of Faculty in a small town New England university. Pressured and humiliated into quitting his academic position as a result of an unintentional racial double entendre he blames the subsequent death of his wife on the affair. Seething with resentment and seeking revenge on those within the university who remained silent or actively collaborated in his demise, he finally takes up with a badly damaged, poorly educated backwater girl half his age who is being stalked by her psychotic ex-Nam war vet ex-husband. Silk's life becomes increasingly precarious and complicated, resulting in the inevitable denouement. We learn later that throughout his adult life he had harboured a personal secret (out of self-interest) which made his humiliation almost laughably ironic.
Roth tackles major issues (political correctness, identity politics, racial prejudice, overseas adventurism, dumb education and dumb culture) against a backdrop of an extremely trivial one (the Clinton-Lewinsky affair) and it is a risky undertaking in modern America because of the very issues he is attacking. In particular he lays himself open to claims of cryptic racism but that would be a false claim. The action taken by Coleman Silk is not new; it is one that has been used by American Jews and English working-class men in the past as a means of personal progress and is merely a damning statement about the social climate and pressures of certain societies at certain periods in their history. It has nothing to do with personal shame or self-loathing.
There is some terrific characterisation, notably of Silk himself, his nemesis Faunia Farley, her deranged husband Lester, and Delphine Roux, the alienated French academic hired by Silk, an action that he came to regret. You genuinely come to understand their individual motivations, foibles, weaknesses and neuroses as a result. The writing is dense yet fast-paced and angry. This is the best novel I have read so far published in the current century.



Which translation?, 28 Apr 2008
It's pretty much all been said and I gladly add my voice to the chorus of praise but I write to suggest reading the original translation by Eleanor Marx Aveling (daughter of Karl Marx); the more florid victorian prose is apposite for the era and truly spellbinding.

Fabulous, 12 Dec 2005
I have just finished reading Madame Bovary for the first time. I write this with the ripples and textures of the novel fresh in my mind. And what textures!

It is not a particularly considered evaluation then, nor is it a 'literary' perspective, simply the intial reactions of one very ordinary reader. Perhaps some will find it helpful.

I won't detail the plot here, other reviewers have already done so elsewhere. At the most basic level the book relates a simple, almost archetypal tragedy. To briefly outline the plot is to recite a familiar morality tale. Flaubert's brilliance is to subvert the form, subtly but to such a degree, that the morality ebbs away and is replaced by something far more sinister, and far more interesting: humanity. Naturally, the book's power to shock and scandalize has diminished considerably in the century and a half since it was published, but presumably few readers are interested only in what is currently 'groundbreaking'.

The writing is sublime. It must be magical in the original French but alas, my poverty of intellect prevents me from sampling its delights. I have read Mauldoon's English translation and it is gorgeous. Apparently Flaubert did not consider himself the most naturally gifted of writers and spent a huge amount of time and precision over his style. Some passages, presumably as a consequence of this, feel a trifle over-delicate. Some readers might even go so far as to say dull. I wouldn't, but there are certainly moments when Flaubert's passion for what he is writing does appear to flag somewhat. These are small criticisms. The reward for his effort is in the abundance of superbly crafted metaphors, the mouth watering imagery, the hilarious characterization...I would not leave it there but I fear continuing such a list might drive me back into the novel's pages and this review would never be finished!

The genius of Flaubert's narrative voice has been noted by other readers here. It is this, principally, that undermines the notion of 'proper morals' that might otherwise inflitrate the novel. It is this that saves Emma the ignominy of becoming just another symbol of woman's capricious follies. It is this that, conversely, fashions of the novel's heroine something of a proto-feminist icon. To suggest that the book lacks sympathetic characters is ludicrous. Emma Bovary is one of the greatest heroines I have come across and I defy anyone who has ever been guilty of a romantic heart not to identify with her. Her husband Charles seems pathetic and weak, perhaps, but he will move every reader to tender pity.

In a great many respects, the irony and detachment of Flaubert's voice gives Madame Bovary a special resonance for modern society. And for those unconvinced, how about a fleeting moment of Flaubert's own splendid romanticism at work, refracted through the caddish Rodolphe:

'and human language is like a cracked kettledrum on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, when what we long to do is make music that will move the stars to pity.'

You made music Gustave, you most certainly did. I recommend this book. I hope new readers enjoy it even more than I did.

Dated Period Piece or Classic Tragedy?, 20 May 2004
Depending on your perspective, this book is hopelessly dated and has little relevance to today, is an important step forward in the French novel, or is a classic depiction of tragedy in the Greek tradition. You should decide which perspective is most meaningful to you in determining whether you should read the book or not.

The story of the younger Madame Bovary (her mother-in-law is the other) is presented in the context of people whose illusions exceed their reality. Eventually, reality catches up with them. In the case of Emma Bovary, these illusions are mostly tied up in the notion that romantic relationships will make life wonderful and that love conquers all. She meets a young doctor of limited potential and marries with little thought. Soon, she finds him unbearable. The only time she is happy is when the two attend a ball at a chateaux put on by some of the nobility (the beautiful people of that time). She has a crisis of spirit and becomes depressed. To help, he moves to another town where life may be better for her. She has a daughter, but takes no interest in her. Other men attract her, and she falls for each one who pays attention to her in a romantic style. Clearly, she is in love with romance. Adultery is not rewarded, and she has a breakdown when one lover leaves her. Recovering, she takes on a younger lover she can dominate. This, too, works badly and she becomes reckless in her pursuit of pleasure. In the process, she takes to being reckless in other ways and brings financial ruin to herself and her family. The book ends in tragedy.

Here is the case for this being dated and irrelevant for today. A modern woman would usually not be trapped in such a way. She would separate from or divorce the husband she grew to detest, and make a new life. She would be able to earn a decent living, and would not be discouraged from raising a child alone. So the story would probably not happen now. In addition, the psychological aspects of her dilemma would be portrayed in terms of an inner struggle reflecting our knowledge today of psychology, rather than as a visual struggle followed mostly by a camera lens in this novel. The third difference is that the shallow stultifying people exalted by the society would be of little interest today. You find few novels about boring people in small towns in rural areas.

The case for the book as important in French literature is varied. The writing is very fine, and will continue to attract those who love the French language forever. This is a rare novel for its day in that it focused on a heroine who was neither noble by class nor noble in spirit. The book clearly makes more of an exploration into psychology than all but a few earlier French novels. The story itself was a shocking one in its day, for its focus on immoral behavior and the author's failure to overtly condemn that behavior. Emma pays the price, as Hollywood would require, but there is no sermonizing against her. So this book is a breakthrough in the modern novel in its shift in focus and tone to a personal pedestrian level.

From a third perspective, this book is a modern update of the classic Green tragedy in which all-too human characters struggle against a remorseless fate and are destroyed in the process. But we see their humanity and are moved by it. Emma's character is a hopeless romantic is established early. To be a hopeless romantic in a world where no one else she meets is condemns her to disappointment. She also seems to have some form of mental illness that makes it hard for her to deal with setbacks. But her optimism that somehow things will work out makes her appealing to us, and makes us wish for her success. When she does not succeed, we grieve with her family. Flaubert makes many references to fate in the novel, so it seems likely that this reading was intended.

My own view is that the modern reader who is not a scholar of French literature can only enjoy this book from the third perspective. If you do, there are many subtle ironies relative to the times and places in the novel that you will appreciate, as well. The ultimate ascendence of the careful, unimaginative pharmacist provides many of these. The ultimate fate of Madame Bovary's daughter, Berthe, is another. Be sure to look for these ironies among the details of these prosaic lives. The book positively teems with them.

If you are interested in perspectives two or three, I suggest you read and savor this fine classic. If you want something that keeps pace with modern times, manners, mores and knowledge, avoid this book!

If you do decide to read Madame Bovary, after you are done be sure to consider in what elements of your life you are filled with illusions that do not correspond to reality. We all have vague hopes that "when" we have "it" (whatever "it" is), life will be perfect. These illusions are often doomed to be shattered. Let your joy come from the seeking of worthy goals, instead! What worthy goals speak deeply into your heart and mind? In this way, you can overcome the misconceptions that stall your personal progress.

The Hope Diamond of Novels, 30 Nov 2002
Making a statement like Madame Bovary is the "greatest" novel ever written would be superfluous. It could be argued that it is the most perfectly written novel in the history of letters and that in creating it, Flaubert mastered the genre. What can't be argued is that it is one of the most influential novels ever written. It changed the face of literature as no other novel has, and has been appreciated and acknowledged by virtually every important novelist who was either Flaubert's contemporary or who came after him.

It's interesting to see the range in opinion that still surrounds this novel. Some of the Readers here at Amazon are morally affronted by the novel's central character, viewing her as something sinister and "unlikeable," and panning the novel for this reason. Such a reaction recalls the negative reviews Bovary engendered soon after its initial publication. It was attacked by many of the authorities of French literature at the time for being ugly and perverse, and for the impression that the novel presented no properly moral frame. These readers didn't "like" Emma much either, and they took their dislike out on her creator.

But this is one of the factors making Madame Bovary "modern". One of the hallmarks of modern novels is that they often portray unsympathetic characters, and Emma certainly falls into this category. How can we as readers "like" a woman who elbows her toddler daughter away from her so forcefully that the child "fell against the chest of drawers, and cut her cheek on the brass curtain-holder." After this pernicious behavior, Emma has a few brief moments of self-castigation and maybe even remorse, but very soon is struck by "what an ugly child" Berthe is. Emma's self-centeredness borders on solipsism. For readers looking for maternal instincts in their female characters or for a depiction of a devoted wife, they had better turn to Pearl S. Buck and The Good Earth, perhaps, rather than to Flaubert.

Much has been made of Flaubert's attempts to remove himself from the narrative, that he was searching for some sort of ultimate objectivity. His narrative technique is much more complex than that, however. It is his employment of a shifting narrative, sometimes objective, sometimes subjective, that again is an indicator of the novel's modernity. At times the narrator is merely reporting events or is involved in providing descriptive details. Yet often the authorial voice makes rather plain how the reader is to look at Emma and her plebeian persona. When she finally succumbs to Rodolphe and thinks she is truly in love, Flaubert becomes downright cynical: " 'I've a lover, a lover,' she said to herself again and again, revelling in the thought as if she had attained a second puberty. At last she would know the delights of love, the feverish joys of which she had despaired. She was entering a marvelous world where all was passion, ecstasy, delirium."

Emma is a neurasthenic, in the modern sense, but in the 19th century she would have been said to suffer from hysteria, a mental condition diagnosed primarily in women. When her lovers leave her, she has what amounts to nervous breakdowns. After Rodolphe leaves her she makes herself so sick that she comes near death. Her imagination is much too powerful and too impressionable for her own good. This is part of the reason for Flaubert's oft-repeated quote, "Bovary, c'est moi." Flaubert was a neurasthenic as well and could easily work himself into a swoon as a result of his imaginative flights. There is even conjecture that he may have been, like Dostoevsky, an epileptic, and it is further intimated that this disorder was brought on by nerves, though this may be dubious, medically speaking.

Madame Bovary is not flawless, but it comes awfully close. It is one of the great controlled experiments in the fiction of any era. It even anticipates cinematic technique in many instances, but particularly in the scene at the Agricultural Fair. Note how Flaubert juxtaposes the utterly mundane activities and speeches occurring in the town square with Rodolphe's equally inane seduction of Emma in the empty Council Chamber above the square:

"He took her hand and she did not withdraw it."

"'General Prize!' cried the Chairman.'"

"'Just now, for instance, when I came to call on you...'"

"Monsieur Bizet of Quincampoix."

"'...how could I know that I should escort you here?'"

"Seventy francs!"

"'And I've stayed with you, because I couldn't tear myself away, though I've tried a hundred times.'"

"Manure!"

This is representative Flaubert. With a few deft strokes, he lays the whole absurdity of both the seduction and the provincial's activities bare.

If you have read this book previously and have come away feeling demoralized and even angered, please try reading it again, this time concentrating on the richness of its metaphors, Flaubert's mastery of foreshadowing, symbolism and description. Maybe you will come away with your viewpoint changed. For those who have not yet read this classic of classics, I know that if your mind remains open, you will come away with an appreciation for this master-novelist and for this monumental work.

must read - in French, 28 Nov 2000
I re-read Madame Bovary about once every eighteen months - I read it in French because, in the original (possibly along with Anna Karenina, which I love in English but which I have tried but repeatedly failed at reading in Russian), it is undoubtedly the most insightful and beautifully written novel of the 19th century -- in the original the overall phrasing and the use of individual words is jewel-like & exquisite ("lapidaire" as a French librarian friend once put it). I have no idea of how it reads in English, but if you can't read it in French, it's probably worth a try in English for the content alone.

Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray, 18 Nov 2008
By now, most people are aware of the basic plot of this book: young man foolishly wishes that, upon seeing his current beateous youth captured forever in a picture, he could remain in that moment of youth forever, and the picture age in his stead. Not only that, but the picture becomes twisted and cruel as a result of the callous hedonistic behaviour perpetrated by Gray in his perpetual youth. At first, Gray is horrified, but then finds himself submitting to it...

The Picture of Dorian Gray is a fantastic novel, so fantastic that it made me sad that the eminently quoteable Wilde has only written the one. At one point, a bad-influencing friend of Dorian's lends him a novel that Gray is charmed by, a novel that tells of a man who lives a hedonistic lifestyle, with care only for pleasure and enjoyment, and it's this novel that kick-starts Gray's eventual downfall as it affects Gray's behaviour, leading him to eventually describe it as dangerous. Wilde's novel is possibly such a book: it's seductive discussions on hedonism, pleasure, and the real joys of life almost make one want to throw mores out the window and life such a life oneself, or at least wish intensely for a period that one has or could. Henry Wotton, Gray's witty, philosophical influence is a raconeteur, a man of life, who knows its pleasures and derides it's follies, chosing simply to ignore them. It's his discourses that are particularly charming and fascinating. There's obviously a temperance to his message (in terms of the whole arc of the novel), but that's almost neither here nor there. The Picture of Dorian Gray is a superb book, fascinating, witty, supremely intelligent and philosophical, romantic and gothic and chilling also. It's one of those books that might lay a bomb under your life, and it deserves its classic status.



Hard work, 09 Nov 2008
Found this book to be quite boring! The story was weak the characters dull, all in all an unenjoyable read and unnecessarily wordy.

nothing special, 22 Oct 2008
i didn't really like this book. i found all the characters quite irritating, and the story was fairly absurd and didn't really capture my imagination. more than that, i just didn't feel like there was any real depth to the book. there was nothing truly unpredictable, nothing particularly thought provoking. i don't think there's anything particularly impressive or engaging or interesting about the story. i also found wilde's style of writing so flowery, it just felt a bit fake and naff.
i don't think there's anything particularly special about this book, and i wouldn't say it's particularly worthwhile reading it.


A New Light....., 27 Sep 2008
After reading a review of "The Ripper Code" in the TLS, I had to return to my school favourite and reread it. It was fascinating to read it in a new light.

Sublime, 25 Sep 2008
I loved this book, not so much for the cautionary tale or the disintigration of Dorian's conscience, but for the beautiful philosophy embelishing the story; many of the things Henry says, for example, are interesting and thought-provoking theories on life. And I loved how youth and beauty were depicted in the book. The only criticism I would give is that it was far too short for my liking, and I thought that the part between Dorian's youth and his 38th year could've been elaborated on. Though an original, genius story!

'What Was Lost' Has Found What Recent Novels Have Been Missing..., 21 Nov 2008
'What Was Lost' is Catherine O'Flynn's debut award-winning novel, which tells the story of Kate Meaney who mysteriously goes missing in 1984 and the resonance this has when, some twenty years later, she reappears on a CCTV camera in Green Oaks Shopping Centre. The novel considers the butterfly effect of Kate's disappearance on the lives of Kurt, a security guard, and Lisa, a shop manager, who in 2004 find themselves trapped in unfulfilling roles at Green Oaks. This is the stage where the story's drama unfolds and the common denominator between all the characters and sub-stories within the novel - all the losses relate to the shopping centre and the retail future its represents at the expense of a previous way of life.

The novel opens in 1984, with the narrative painting the world through the eyes of child-detective Kate, a lonely ten year old who has lost her place even before her official disappearance. The skill with which O'Flynn depicts the naïve and honest perceptions of childhood and loneliness is highly commendable, and when the story jumps after some sixty pages to 2004, I found myself touched by a personal sense of loss for the character. However, despite my initial reluctance to shift perspectives, the portrayals of Lisa and Kurt proved to be no less absorbing, and it is in this future that one encounters a number of the walk-on roles of customers, whose obstinacies and misfortunes are a joy to read. The book moves rapidly from moments of laugh-out-loud ridicule to lump-in-your-throat compassion, all the while revealing clues to solve the mystery of the lost girl.

Touching base with both humour and heartbreak, often in quick succession, for me the strength of O'Flynn's writing lies in her uncanny ability of perception and the accuracy with which she depicts all the lives in the story. A definite highlight would be the sporadic and unrelated monologues offered by customers who have visited the shopping centre and her poignant portraits of employees or visitors, all of which seem to connect with an essential truth of humanity. On other occasions throughout the novel, O'Flynn explores the idea of speech, with certain scenes comprising entirely of scripted conversation to great effect.

The book has surprising relevance to contemporary current affairs, and the conclusion skilfully wove all the threads of the story together in an unexpected and remarkable resolution. Rarely, if ever, does a book successfully manipulate elements of humour, romance, mystery and ghost-story together in an honest yet enthralling way, yet this is exactly what is achieved in 'What Was Lost'.



Good first novel but nowhere as good as the hype, 03 Nov 2008
'Crime was out there. Undetected, unseen. She hoped she wouldn't be too late'.

The story revolves around a little girl who is orphaned and carries on (obsessively) playing detective. The writing in this first part of the book is very engaging and although I found the child's life somewhat unconvincing I was very happy to suspend disbelief and enjoy.

The narrative then moves on twenty years and we take up with minor characters from the first story years later in the shopping centre where she disappeared. There is good writing here too but the book loses its way and as other reviewers have noted you can tell it's a first novel. Other reviewers think the ending was masterful - I thought it weak.

I look forward to further books from Ms O'Flynn as she is clearly a talented writer though for me this novel is structurally flawed.

read it in a day, 10 Oct 2008
LOved IT, loved the narration - loved the jokes ( had to stop myself laughing as i was reading it at work)
loved the Quinton and steri refs

presume was based on MErry Hill
well done Catherine!

OK, 16 Sep 2008
I picked this up in my local Tesco the other day, thought it looked intriguing but although it was nicely written it failed to excite me. I thought the early part about Kate and her detective agency was quite funny, and perceptive, the eyes of a child were well depicted, but when it moved into the present day I lost interest really. Skipped some of it to get to the end to find out what actually happened to Kate and Adrian, average book.

Beautifully written, 02 Sep 2008
Contrary to at least one other review, I find the character of Kate the pre-teen detective very convincing, wonderfully drawn, and like several other characters in this wonderfully written novel, achingly sad.

There is something of Joanne Harris in the spareness of the prose here, deceptively simple, clean, uncomplicated, but flowing.

The plot is perhaps thin in places, and certainly the conclusion is not entirely convincing, but it feels rather like an excuse to produce some of these fine characters. Like many an early novel, you suspect more than a hint of autobiography as well.

A lovely read.

Mixed feelings, 05 May 2008
Let me just start with the silliest comment: the only way to find out whether you like this book or not, is by reading it. Most reviews here and on Amazon.com reflect ambivalent feelings. After turning the last page, mine was not altogether negative, but not entirely positive either. This was also my first book by Philip Roth.

Ageing but vigorous professor Coleman Silk is accused of racism in the classroom and forcefully rejecting it (in vain), he chooses to retire after a long, fulfilling and esteemed teaching career. His tale is told by his friend, writer Nathan Zuckerman. Hardly acknowledging each other for years, a friendship begins and Zuckerman tries to understand the multiple facets defining Silk's personality. Unbeknownst to him, he will later discover a secret that Silk has kept for decades, a secret which his life had been, and still is, based on.

Looping around the main theme, there are other characters who are connected with Silk and bear relevance. In the background, Coleman's parents and siblings. Their beginnings, the struggles to send all their children to proper schools for the best education possible. We then have his wife, a strong, independent personality who died during the `racism ordeal', and their four adult children (it's 1998 by then). Silk's bursting rage and pain towards these two -to him- related events (the accusations and his wife's death), find a degree of comfort through the acquaintance -later developing into something much more- of Faunia, a janitor in the Athena college where he used to teach. Faunia, a tormented soul herself, does not seem to be left alone by her ex-husband, Les, who keeps stalking her after a terrible tragedy struck at their home some years previously. Some other characters from the past who are irretrievably connected with Coleman, pop into the picture. His former girlfriend, Steena, met and loved in his twenties. The young French dean at Athena, Dolphine Roux, who supported the racism accusations. Zuckerman himself finds a niche for some of his personal details.

So many people, so many different personalities, so many tragedies. This book explores a variety of themes -race, rape, depression, death, loneliness- which make it certainly for a substantial, full-of-texture read. It also speaks of love, love for a profession, for a person, for life in general, but the intricacy with which the author interpolates this concept is open to debate. This is why I cannot define in full its identifying quality, or, for that matter, what exactly I did not like about this book. Perhaps a certain dislike for the structure of some of the chapters: sentences which do not see a full stop, a pause, for an entire page for example. This rendered the read a bit tedious. Also, I found the numerous references to the Clinton/Lewinski's `interlude' somewhat irrelevant to the core of the story and if the purpose was to pinpoint that Silk's own story began to unfold back then, in 1998, well, it was clear enough already. Not to mention the final paragraphs -and this is not a spoiler- when an incredible and unrealistic conversation ensues in a cemetery. I mean, was that to supply the reader with some final `answers' -which could not have been `real' anyway since it was all a mental image?- .

And yet. Coleman Silk is a personage. And his secret, the secret from which we are often distracted due to a number of superimposed, unnecessary (to me) details, is the central theme of this book. Like it or not, mixed feelings or not, I've never written such a long review before. There must be a reason, although I myself am not sure what that is. What I am sure about is that this tale is so imbued with wrenching issues that it cannot fail to dazzle, provoke and stimulate conversations.



Very putdownable, 28 Mar 2008
The premise and the promise is great, but the book fails to impress. This book has two of Roth's favourite preoccupations - sex and the experience of the Jewish man in America - in abundance. This was also very important material for Everyman, whereas the latter is an absolute tour de force this is a tour to nowehere, via a fairly dull and lengthy scenic route that I did not even wish to complete. One of the main problems with this book is the detachment I experience from its central character Coleman Silk. I would rather that he had delivered this narrative first hand. Instead it is delivered by Roth's alter ego Nathan Zuckerman. Another problem is the huge amount of words and energy invested in to building character and "backstory" (that awful new expression) for characters that really turn out to be not very important. Dare I accuse the great Roth of this (and he IS sometimes great) but much of this seems to be padding. Indeed, you get the feeing that Roth is writing too much and that half of his output of the last 10 years would be more than sufficient. Everyman is wonderful and so to supposedly, is American Pastoral. Both are enough to secure his reputation in the pantheon of great American novelists - as if he needed anyone to reassure him - and that's not mentioning Goodbye Columbus, Portnoy's Complaint and the 20 plus other novels he has written. Although this book has plenty of interesting things to say about political correctness gone mad and issues of race and racism, I found that I was left wanting to get properly inside the head of Coleman Silk but with the narrative stucture and device employed, this proved impossible.

Remarkably captivating, 15 Feb 2008
Here are sentences like paragraphs and paragraphs like chapters which have a tendency to exasperate. That said, this is actually a great read. Zuckerman, the writer again, has an assignment of profound consequence. An association with Coleman allows us to see a retrospective unfolding scene to the inevitable. There is no especial mystery, yet the novel is remarkably captivating. Some characters are witnessed second hand, but this does not matter, for that is part of the well developed construction. Ideas are aplenty with lots of rich pages of impressive brilliance.


A primer for the soul, 22 Nov 2007
I've long since learned to be sceptical of the hyberbolic quotes that decorate the covers of books. So when I read the Sunday Telegraph's summary of The Human Stain as 'The work of a genius at full throttle' I anticipated disappointment. But within only a few pages their assessment became a statement of fact rather than opinion.

It would have been absurd for Roth to call his novel 'The Human Condition', and yet he reasonably could have. In these three hundred and fifty or so pages he describes with cruel precision the human need to tell stories and lies about ourselves and each other - stories and lies which together ensure that all human interaction is at cross purposes. 'Intention? Motive? Consequence? Meaning?' he writes. 'All that we don't know is astonishing. Even more astonishing is what passes for knowing.'

Through the story of Coleman Silk, a man whose anger at being wronged is amplified to the point of near madness by the knowledge of his own secret wrongs, Roth shines a bitterly bright spotlight on the assumptions we make about others, and on the assumptions we try to make others have of us. The Human Stain is a tragedy of epic proportions - with all the pain, irony, misunderstanding and revelation that suggests. The twists of the plot are like the twists of the knife as he skewers human frailty, prejudice and self-deception.

I read this book very slowly - not because it is hard work (it is in fact an electrifying page-turner) - but because the brilliance of the prose and the richness of the insight makes it sometimes feel like a primer for the soul - and to miss a sentence might be to miss an insight one should never forget. So, for example, buried deep mid-paragraph, in the middle of the book, Roth almost casually encapsulates the thesis of the novel: '...we leave a stain, we leave a trail, we leave our imprint. Impurity, cruelty, abuse, error, excrement, semen - there's no other way to be here. Nothing to do with disobedience. Nothing to do with grace or salvation or redemption. It's in everyone. Indwelling. Inherent. Defining. The stain that is there before its mark.'

Lately I have felt weary of the over conceptualised and plodding earnestness of so much contemporary literary fiction, and this book singlehandedly made me fall in love again with the act and purpose of reading. It is a book that makes you want to gasp at the beauty of language in the hands of a master-craftsman, and that leaves you feeling wiser about yourself, and everyone else - even if that wisdom is deep, dark and desperate.

Identity politics and political correctness as manifestations of American insecurity, 11 Oct 2007
The central premise in Philip Roth's fulminating diatribe against the maladies of modern America is very flimsy and yet it works, probably because of its flimsiness. The pity is that I can't state it clearly here without spoiling the plot, though other reviewers have done so.
Narrated by Nathan Zuckerman, Roth's alter ego, the story revolves around the life of Coleman Silk, the autocratic Dean of Faculty in a small town New England university. Pressured and humiliated into quitting his academic position as a result of an unintentional racial double entendre he blames the subsequent death of his wife on the affair. Seething with resentment and seeking revenge on those within the university who remained silent or actively collaborated in his demise, he finally takes up with a badly damaged, poorly educated backwater girl half his age who is being stalked by her psychotic ex-Nam war vet ex-husband. Silk's life becomes increasingly precarious and complicated, resulting in the inevitable denouement. We learn later that throughout his adult life he had harboured a personal secret (out of self-interest) which made his humiliation almost laughably ironic.
Roth tackles major issues (political correctness, identity politics, racial prejudice, overseas adventurism, dumb education and dumb culture) against a backdrop of an extremely trivial one (the Clinton-Lewinsky affair) and it is a risky undertaking in modern America because of the very issues he is attacking. In particular he lays himself open to claims of cryptic racism but that would be a false claim. The action taken by Coleman Silk is not new; it is one that has been used by American Jews and English working-class men in the past as a means of personal progress and is merely a damning statement about the social climate and pressures of certain societies at certain periods in their history. It has nothing to do with personal shame or self-loathing.
There is some terrific characterisation, notably of Silk himself, his nemesis Faunia Farley, her deranged husband Lester, and Delphine Roux, the alienated French academic hired by Silk, an action that he came to regret. You genuinely come to understand their individual motivations, foibles, weaknesses and neuroses as a result. The writing is dense yet fast-paced and angry. This is the best novel I have read so far published in the current century.



Which translation?, 28 Apr 2008
It's pretty much all been said and I gladly add my voice to the chorus of praise but I write to suggest reading the original translation by Eleanor Marx Aveling (daughter of Karl Marx); the more florid victorian prose is apposite for the era and truly spellbinding.

Fabulous, 12 Dec 2005
I have just finished reading Madame Bovary for the first time. I write this with the ripples and textures of the novel fresh in my mind. And what textures!

It is not a particularly considered evaluation then, nor is it a 'literary' perspective, simply the intial reactions of one very ordinary reader. Perhaps some will find it helpful.

I won't detail the plot here, other reviewers have already done so elsewhere. At the most basic level the book relates a simple, almost archetypal tragedy. To briefly outline the plot is to recite a familiar morality tale. Flaubert's brilliance is to subvert the form, subtly but to such a degree, that the morality ebbs away and is replaced by something far more sinister, and far more interesting: humanity. Naturally, the book's power to shock and scandalize has diminished considerably in the century and a half since it was published, but presumably few readers are interested only in what is currently 'groundbreaking'.

The writing is sublime. It must be magical in the original French but alas, my poverty of intellect prevents me from sampling its delights. I have read Mauldoon's English translation and it is gorgeous. Apparently Flaubert did not consider himself the most naturally gifted of writers and spent a huge amount of time and precision over his style. Some passages, presumably as a consequence of this, feel a trifle over-delicate. Some readers might even go so far as to say dull. I wouldn't, but there are certainly moments when Flaubert's passion for what he is writing does appear to flag somewhat. These are small criticisms. The reward for his effort is in the abundance of superbly crafted metaphors, the mouth watering imagery, the hilarious characterization...I would not leave it there but I fear continuing such a list might drive me back into the novel's pages and this review would never be finished!

The genius of Flaubert's narrative voice has been noted by other readers here. It is this, principally, that undermines the notion of 'proper morals' that might otherwise inflitrate the novel. It is this that saves Emma the ignominy of becoming just another symbol of woman's capricious follies. It is this that, conversely, fashions of the novel's heroine something of a proto-feminist icon. To suggest that the book lacks sympathetic characters is ludicrous. Emma Bovary is one of the greatest heroines I have come across and I defy anyone who has ever been guilty of a romantic heart not to identify with her. Her husband Charles seems pathetic and weak, perhaps, but he will move every reader to tender pity.

In a great many respects, the irony and detachment of Flaubert's voice gives Madame Bovary a special resonance for modern society. And for those unconvinced, how about a fleeting moment of Flaubert's own splendid romanticism at work, refracted through the caddish Rodolphe:

'and human language is like a cracked kettledrum on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, when what we long to do is make music that will move the stars to pity.'

You made music Gustave, you most certainly did. I recommend this book. I hope new readers enjoy it even more than I did.

Dated Period Piece or Classic Tragedy?, 20 May 2004
Depending on your perspective, this book is hopelessly dated and has little relevance to today, is an important step forward in the French novel, or is a classic depiction of tragedy in the Greek tradition. You should decide which perspective is most meaningful to you in determining whether you should read the book or not.

The story of the younger Madame Bovary (her mother-in-law is the other) is presented in the context of people whose illusions exceed their reality. Eventually, reality catches up with them. In the case of Emma Bovary, these illusions are mostly tied up in the notion that romantic relationships will make life wonderful and that love conquers all. She meets a young doctor of limited potential and marries with little thought. Soon, she finds him unbearable. The only time she is happy is when the two attend a ball at a chateaux put on by some of the nobility (the beautiful people of that time). She has a crisis of spirit and becomes depressed. To help, he moves to another town where life may be better for her. She has a daughter, but takes no interest in her. Other men attract her, and she falls for each one who pays attention to her in a romantic style. Clearly, she is in love with romance. Adultery is not rewarded, and she has a breakdown when one lover leaves her. Recovering, she takes on a younger lover she can dominate. This, too, works badly and she becomes reckless in her pursuit of pleasure. In the process, she takes to being reckless in other ways and brings financial ruin to herself and her family. The book ends in tragedy.

Here is the case for this being dated and irrelevant for today. A modern woman would usually not be trapped in such a way. She would separate from or divorce the husband she grew to detest, and make a new life. She would be able to earn a decent living, and would not be discouraged from raising a child alone. So the story would probably not happen now. In addition, the psychological aspects of her dilemma would be portrayed in terms of an inner struggle reflecting our knowledge today of psychology, rather than as a visual struggle followed mostly by a camera lens in this novel. The third difference is that the shallow stultifying people exalted by the society would be of little interest today. You find few novels about boring people in small towns in rural areas.

The case for the book as important in French literature is varied. The writing is very fine, and will continue to attract those who love the French language forever. This is a rare novel for its day in that it focused on a heroine who was neither noble by class nor noble in spirit. The book clearly makes more of an exploration into psychology than all but a few earlier French novels. The story itself was a shocking one in its day, for its focus on immoral behavior and the author's failure to overtly condemn that behavior. Emma pays the price, as Hollywood would require, but there is no sermonizing against her. So this book is a breakthrough in the modern novel in its shift in focus and tone to a personal pedestrian level.

From a third perspective, this book is a modern update of the classic Green tragedy in which all-too human characters struggle against a remorseless fate and are destroyed in the process. But we see their humanity and are moved by it. Emma's character is a hopeless romantic is established early. To be a hopeless romantic in a world where no one else she meets is condemns her to disappointment. She also seems to have some form of mental illness that makes it hard for her to deal with setbacks. But her optimism that somehow things will work out makes her appealing to us, and makes us wish for her success. When she does not succeed, we grieve with her family. Flaubert makes many references to fate in the novel, so it seems likely that this reading was intended.

My own view is that the modern reader who is not a scholar of French literature can only enjoy this book from the third perspective. If you do, there are many subtle ironies relative to the times and places in the novel that you will appreciate, as well. The ultimate ascendence of the careful, unimaginativ