14. Gustave Flaubert - Madame Bovary

I thought, rather to my surprise, that this was complete tosh. Badly written (or translated? I know Flaubert is supposed to be a master of French style).

Heroine unbelievable and a huge amount of padding about drugs, a pompous French druggist taking up a lot of time. Seemed to be a formulaic book as in 'I'm going to write a salacious novel (for its time) about adultery, now what behaviours are typical of an adulteress?' Maybe that's just the way the French think.

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