Thursday, January 19, 2012

Six novels about grand passions

The Christian Science Monitor culled six novels about grand passions from Thomas Craughwell's Great Books for every Book Lover.

One title on the list:
Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert

Madame Bovary (née Emma Rouault) is a flighty but beautiful young wife with delusions of grandeur. She rejects her husband Charles for his failure to provide her with high romance and a grand literary style of living. Bovary self-destructs after conducting multiple affairs and accumulating staggering debt.
Read about another novel on the list.

Madame Bovary is on John Mullan's lists of ten landmark coach rides in literature, ten of the best cathedrals in literature, ten of the best balls in literature, ten of the best bad lawyers in literature, ten of the best lotharios in literature, and ten of the best bad doctors in fiction, Valerie Martin's list of six novels about doomed marriages, and Louis Begley's list of favorite novels about cheating lovers. It tops Peter Carey's list of the top ten works of literature and was second on a top ten works of literature list selected by leading writers from Britain, America and Australia in 2007. It is one of John Bowe's six favorite books on love.

--Marshal Zeringue