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Loading... Gemma Bovery (original 1999; edition 2005)by Posy Simmonds
Work InformationGemma Bovery by Posy Simmonds (1999)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Light entertainment - and the drawings are very good. ( ) A knowing graphic novel parody of Flaubert's 'Madame Bovary', written and illustrated by the wonderful Posy Simmonds. As is her wont, she gently mocks the English middle class and their desires. Here the target is expatriate English owning cottages in France. Gemma Bovery has married on the rebound and found herself living a boring dream in a French town. She proceeds to have affairs and go on spending sprees. The story is told by M. Joubert, a local baker who becomes obsessed with Gemma and her connection to the novel 'Madame Bovary'. While the book's This graphic novel was a great read. Normally I hate books whose plots center around infidelity, I get to anxious to enjoy them. However knowing the end at the beginning helped a lot. Gemma and her husband Charlie Bovery move to Normandy and their neighbor the baker Joubet starts keeping an eye on Gemma. Her name reminds him of Emma Bovery from the famous novel. He becomes obsessed with following her story because he feels she is going down a very familiar path. I love the way the story is told, going back and forth between the bakers point of view and Gemma's diaries.
In this parody, few characters come out well, and the true end is silly, a let-down, just like life. Literature has reason; life has humor in spite of itself. There is more than just drawing going on here, of course. There is pacing - [Gemma Bovery] moves from illustrated text to straight comic strip and back again - and there is the prose, from the narrative frame of Joubert, the nosy, creepy baker (for whom we feel a strange kind of pity), to Gemma's diaries, and down to the speech-bubbles of all the characters. Simmonds has, in this sense, two kinds of blank paper staring at her every morning, and she should be honoured for filling them so perfectly, with such a combination of daring and what looks like effortlessness. That she has to do two nationalities as well - would she perhaps care to make things more difficult for herself next time? And, please, can there be a next time very, very soon? She is the greatest. Is a retelling ofHas the adaptationNotable Lists
Gemma is the bored, pretty second wife of Charlie Bovery, the reluctant stepmother of his children and the bate-noire of his ex-wife. Gemma's sudden windfall and distaste for London take them across the Channel to Normandy, where the charms of French country living soon wear off. Is it a coincidence that Gemma Bovery has a name rather like Flaubert's notorious heroine? Is it by chance that, like Madame Bovary, Gemma is bored, adulterous, and a bad credit risk? Is she inevitably doomed? These questions consume Gemma's neighbour, the intellectual baker, Joubert. Denying voyeurism, but nevertheless noting every change in the fit of her jeans, every addition to Gemma's wardrobe, her love-bites and lovers, Joubert, with the help of the heroine's diaries, follows her path towards ruin. Adultery and its consequences. Disappointment and deception. The English in France. Fat and slim. Then and now. Many familiar ingredients of the novel are given new life in Gemma Bovery's unique graphic form. Like Posy Simmond's legendary cartoon strips featuring the Weber family, Gemma Boverywas published in weekly parts in the Guardian. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)741.5942The arts Graphic arts and decorative arts Drawing & drawings Cartoons, Caricatures, Comics Collections European England & WalesLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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