Geoffrey Wall

Geoffrey Wall gives us Flaubert in all his contradictory splendor: as a man who lived quietly at home in the sphere of his widowed mother, writing novels at a rate of five words an hour; as an irregular visitor to Paris, where he participated in important literary and social milieus; and as a passionate traveler whose trips put him in company with courtesans, actresses, acrobats, gypsies, idiots, and simpletons of every stripe, until he returned home...

The publication in 1857 of Madame Bovary, with its vivid depictions of sex and adultery, incited a backlash of immorality charges. The novel tells the story of Emma Bovary, a doctor's wife bored and unfulfilled by marriage and motherhood. She embarks upon a series of affairs in search of passion and excitement, but is unable to achieve the splendid life for which she yearns. Instead, she finds herself trapped in a downward spiral that inexorably leads...