Sophie Divry

I haven't read Flaubert's Madame Bovary but understand it is about a Dr's wife who is bored to tears with her life and takes refuge in an affair. Her spending habits leave them in massive debt as material wealth is very important to her and the main themes are lack of communication, roles of women and the rising middle classes.

The book tells the story of M.A. from her birth to her death. Born to parents who owned the local garage with her father often working as a mechanic, her early life is told in staccato snippets, memories that don't provide the whole picture but highlights and just enough to make her a little more intriguing; someone with a temper, enjoying the freedom of your parents going out and leaving you on your own, answering back in class but above all bored.

And so life goes on - university, marriage, work , children, work and an affair, menopause and the need for counselling growing older and finally relaxing with grandchildren. It's a perfectly conventional journey through life and one which M.A. rails against for most of her life, always waiting, waiting for the BIG thing which probably couldn't be described. Is this why we are so inisistent that nowadays we record our gratitude for the little things, taking pleasure where we are, because the big, exciting things may never happen?

The book constantly steps forward and imagines what might happen and then steps back again and continues with what did happen, that place where we imagine all the pathways open to us at various junctures but then this is what happens. It seems to be constantly saying stay in the present, don't imagine too much because you will only be disappointed. We get a wonderful, pages long description of preparing for friends to come over for a meal, the anxiety that everything goes well and that the food is good with a couple of lines and minutes when you relax. It has all gone well but then you have to start on the tidying up.

You went up the stairs, you felt rather heavy, rather sad as you closed your eyes, kissing the man at your side who was already asleep. It was only a meal, after all, even if it had been good.
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So even doing something well doesn't bring about any changes. The book is written with a lightness and the translation is good enough to show the changes in how we speak over the decades but how depressing to be trapped in a life and roles that bore you and finding yourself unable to shake out of it. The boredom was never communicated and so nothing changed. The only thing is, I bet many of us can see elements of our own lives lived through M.A.… (meer)

The English language translation of Sophie Divry's La Condition Pavillonnaire gives the game away in its title. "Here", it seems to announce, "is an updated Madame Bovary; a knowing, ironic version of Flaubert's classic". There's also a sense of bravado in this, especially considering that Madame Bovary has been described as a "perfect novel" - however, to be fair, the book remains true to the promise in its title. It follows the life of the protagonist - the anonymous "M.A." - practically from the cradle (in 1950s France) to the grave (in the mid 2020s). If M.A. has a defining characteristic, it is her persistent feeling of boredom. Her life is a constant battle against ennui.

The novel is in three parts: first part leads us to M.A's marriage to the stable, if unexciting insurance agent Francois; the second part, which is the core of the novel, centres around M.A.'s affair with one of her bosses, an escapade which promises relief from the ordinary but unsurprisingly leaves an aftertaste of sordidness; in the third and final part, the boredom becomes tinged with a sense of panic with the onset of old age.

Divry has a sharp sense of observation and M.A.'s story is told against the backdrop of the French middle-class as it evolved over the past decades. The novel also has its stylistic quirks. It is conveyed, throughout, in second-person narration. This can easily sound awkward, but works surprisingly well in Alison Anderson's deft translation. There are also moments when the narrator seems to adopt a bird's eye view, as if society were a colony of ants under the scrutiny of a biologist or as if the reader were an alien being brought face-to-face with human idiosyncrasies. I have in mind, in particular, a weird 2 - 3-page "encyclopedic" passage about cars, and our fixation with them.

These two points however lead me to my reservations about the novel. It is easy to pity M.A. and see her as a product of a materialistic, male-dominated society. Given the author's feminist credentials it could also well be that we are actually meant to take this view. Yet, rather than making us root for M.A., the objective, almost clinical perspective adopted by Divry makes it difficult to feel sympathy for the protagonist herself. Society is criticized, and often harshly, but M.A.'s seeming lack of interest in the feelings of the persons surrounding her does not earn her many brownie points either (at least, with this particular reader). When this sensation sets in, the second-person narrative starts to feel strident, accusative. Then again, Flaubert's masterpiece is often subjected to the same sort of criticism. Even in this regard, Madame Bovary of the Suburbs does what it states on the cover.

3.5 *

This electronic version of the novel was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review… (meer)