It's Bovary NOT Bovery

I've loved books all my life, but in college I was able to devote myself to them. It was in college that I was able to fall in love with everything from Dorian Gray to Kitchen to Moll Flanders to Frankenstein to Persuasion to Let Their Spirits Dance to if I don't stop listing I never will.

In college I was almost always too busy for some wild romance to sweep me off my feet. But in my reading life? I wanted extravagance. I wanted passion. I wanted pain.

I found all three in Madame Bovary. Flaubert's masterpiece will forever rank in the top ten in my heart. Ahhh, the tragic story of a woman who also wants life to sweep her away only...it keeps...not. And then when it does it all gets ruined and then there is...death.

Lately I've been sad, experiencing ennui thanks to the inclement teaching job market. I'll get back to taking on the world shortly, but I can't help but want to sit in a comfy window seat tilting my head romantically against the window staring off into the distance while I yearn.


...So imagine my excitement when I came across the graphic novel Gemma Bovery, a modern day adaptation. Usually I dislike all things spin-off or adaptation, but P&P&Z got me all hopeful.

I was too hopeful to be true.

My first issue, regardless of the plot concerns words. Words everywhere. Small-print words. Words in French. Words attacking the pages. I love words; however, I prefer my graphic novels to be at least 80:20 (graphics to words).

I next take issue with the plot. Madame Bovary is a beautifully tragic character while Gemma Bovery is just kind of annoying. If you are going to ruin your life with poor (albeit romantic) decisions, I want to at least like you. Gemma (graphic novel) just seemed like she had low self esteem while Emma (classic) is valiantly searching for the unattainable.

SPOILER ALERT

I finally take issue with the end. Flaubert goes there. People die. Emma commits suicide. It is awful. In the graphic novel? Gemma CHOKES ON A SANDWICH. That is how she dies. And the nosy neighbor (who I adore in both novel and graphic) warns the sandwich eater's husband that he could be next because look at the similarities between the classic novel and their lives!

But don't worry, Mr. Bovery's name is Cyril - which is different from Mr. Bovary's - so he won't possibly die. Oh, haha, it is all jokes. Cyril will just sell the house and move back to England back into his old apartment like Gemma Bovery never existed.

This is what a love story is now? Shoot. She died. Well, back to business as usual.

A picture might be worth a thousand words, but not a thousand of Flaubert's words.

"So far as Emma was concerned she did not ask herself whether she was in love. Love, she thought, was something that must come suddenly, with a great display of thunder and lightning, descending on one's life like a tempest from above, turning it topsy-turvy, whirling away one's resolutions like leaves and bearing one onward, heart and soul, toward the abyss."
Flaubert