In short: meandering plot with flat archetypal characters & no flow to the current storyline, thanks to those repeated flashbacks. Berthe herself had very little presence - for the central character of this weird little epic, she had very few thoughts of her own & no vividness whatsoever. These characters just weren't strong enough to support such a herky-jerky method everyone was a cliche, from bitchy Grand-Mere to lusty Renard to the wandering artist to impoverished mill workers, crooked landlady, & gay fashion guru. Said interruptions happen without warning, sometimes in the middle of a conversation - then happen AGAIN not two pages later. meanwhile, the crawling plot is repeatedly interrupted for Berthe's memories of Emma Bovary before jumping forward several days or months.

Horndog farmboy, crossdressing master, lesbian mistress, rapey playboy, posing nude for a platonic mentor/painter, etc. Granted, such a plot is common in bookclub fodder, but the flag-waving Checklist o' Different Worldview Characters with which she experiments and/or observes others' sexual identities is highly picaresque & annoyingly overplayed. No, Berthe Bovary isn't Tom Jones, but she does wander in search of purpose & has various sex scenes along the way. This is a good example of why I tend to dislike picaresque novels. But even as the praise for her couture gowns steadily rises, she still yearns for the one thing her mother never the love of someone she loves in return.īrilliantly integrating one of classic literature’s fictional creations with real historical figures, Madame Bovary’s Daughter is an uncommon coming-of-age tale, a splendid excursion through the rags and the riches of French fashion, and a sweeping novel of poverty and wealth, passion and revenge.

There, as an apprentice to famed fashion designer Charles Frederick Worth, Berthe is ushered into the high society of which she once only dreamed. Berthe’s determination to rise above her mother’s scandalous past will take her from the dangerous cotton mills of Lille to a convent in Rouen to the wealth and glamour of nineteenth-century Paris. Amid the beauty of the French countryside, Berthe models for the painter Jean-François Millet, but fate has more in store for her than a quiet life of simple pleasures. One year after her mother’s suicide and just one day after her father’s brokenhearted demise, twelve-year-old Berthe Bovary is sent to live on her grandmother’s impoverished farm. Picking up after the shattering end of Gustave Flaubert’s classic, Madame Bovary, this beguiling novel imagines an answer to the question Whatever happened to Emma Bovary’s orphaned daughter?

Madame bovary author