Rating: 
Summary: On Consumption
Review: Flaubert would have appreciated the large group of American readers who seem to think it is only a book about adultery; he has duped them. You've fallen for it, people, focusing on titillation again in the grand American tradition. The book is a critique of middle-class consumption as a means of cultural formation, of which adultery is only one result. With your credit card debts, sport utility vehicles and blind allegiance to leaders (as long as the stock market is rising) you possess precisely the values Flaubert implicitly critiques throughout the novel. No one seems willing to discuss Homais and his half-baked status-seeking, either. The tired rituals of bourgeous love are played out nightly on American TV; Flaubert saw it in more subtle tones 150 years ago. A masterpiece.
Rating:
Summary: A very deep, emotional story.
Review: I read this for a school project, and I'm telling 'ya, it's worth it anyway. Emma Bovary, the heroine, is the victim of over-consuming fantasies which take over her life and eventually kill her. She marries Charles Bovary to escape rural life, but ends up hating him because of his dull-witted nature. First falling in love with a young clerk, Leon, then committing adultury with the playboy Rodolphe, then having a passionate affair with Leon after Rodolphe discards her, she continues with her romantic notions and impulses. She accumulates huge debts in order to purchase gifts for her lovers and to live in an elegant fashion, Emma is eventually forced to face the facts of the bills. unable to cope with the disgrace and knowledge that her husband would find out, she overdoses on arsenic and dies. But the story is not just about Emma Bovary and her flights of fancy- it is of all of the characters. Charles, her husband, is oblivious to his wife's unhappiness and believes that she loves him just as much as he does her. Rodolphe is so caught up in his rakish lifestylke that he fails to appreciate Emma's devotion. Leon was too young and idealistic to understand Emma when they began seeing each other. Monsieur Homais, the "man of science," is parodized in a dry fashion for his narrow-mindedness and many wrongs because of it. The story is rich in the characters and lavish in the connection readers will feel when they pick up the book. Wonderful.
Rating:
Summary: A Queer Story
Review: I was surprised to find so much drama in this book, for a turn of a century book, you'd think it'd be about tea and horses, NO! It's about adultry, suicide, depression, all the "hot" late 20th century topics. It's well worth a read.
Rating:
Summary: Oddly Favorable
Review: Madame Bovary is handsdown one of my favorite classics. No other Frenchman has written such a delicate and time captivating story of a lost woman.
Rating:
Summary: Surprisingly Delightful to Read
Review: I love the way Gustave Flaubert used his words, the grammar and structure of the sentences were beautiful to read. Not plain like Hemingway, not overly flowery as Austen, just right.
Rating: 
Summary: a classic
Review: Madame Bovary was Flaubert's tool of purging himself of Romantic tendencies. It is not only the story of a dissatisfied housewife but of the author himself. Emma attempts to fill her solitude with literature, dreams, sex, and things in general. Her struggle is universally identifiable. Many people cannot like this book because they see too much of themselves in Emma. Madame Bovary isn't just Flaubert, she is all of us.
Rating:
Summary: The ONLY work by Flaubert worth Reading
Review: MADAME BOVARY is one of it's own. No other writer has been able to recreate or mimic this woman. Chopin has tried it, and so had Hardy, but the power and weakness of Madame Bovary contrasted with each other somehow, creating a delightful and mystic woman for all centuries to read and enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: Best of Gustave's early works
Review: In here is a young and flightly female who being youthful, has not experienced love, hate, and many basic emotions. This is a very fine tuned book with realistic and dreamy characters. I found the author's Howard's End rather dull written, and even A Passage to India quite too daring, Madame Bovaryis a fabulous light read, a simple book but not for the simple minded
Rating: 
Summary: if you gotta read it, at least get a cheap copy
Review: the overused plot device of a woman in polite society trapped in her loveless sexually repressive marriage who has affairs to "free" herself. we see it again in "the awakening." if you like french lit, you'll love this. if you don't like introspective womany novels, you won't.
Rating:
Summary: A modest doctor marries a naive women.
Review: I think it one of the most interesting books of French literature. The style is very good, espescially if one knows that Flaubert used to shout all his sentences to find out whether they sounded pleasant or not. The details about Emma's life and thoughts are so full of sorrow...The end is rather hard to believe, and that is why the book is for me the best!
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