Rating: 3 1/2 stars
Emma Bovary committed suicide, but not before scandalizing her marriage with affairs and casting her husband Charles and young daughter Berthe into total, financial destitution. For the next year, Berthe watched helplessly as her father slowly wasted away, before he succumbed to a broken heart. Now, only twelve years old, Berthe is an orphan.
Following her father’s burial, Berthe is sent to live on her paternal grandmother’s farm, where she hoped to finally find the love and compassion that her mother denied her. However, poor Berthe was instead treated as nothing more than an unpaid maid and farmhand.
Despite all of the hard labor she endures, Berthe begins to feel a sense of self-worth when a famed artist commissions her to pose for him. However, Berthe’s self-respect quickly dissolves when she and the farm-boy Renaud are caught in a compromising position by her grandmother. Scared of her grandmother’s wrath, Berthe runs, and eventually makes her way to Renaud’s house—only to catch him in a compromising position with one of the local girls.
Returning home to take her punishment, Berthe finds her grandmother’s lifeless body on the kitchen floor.
Now thirteen years old and totally alone, Berthe must depend on her strength and ingenuity to make her way in the world. With dreams of having money and all the finery it can buy, Berthe resolves to rise above her mother’s scandalous memory and to find the one thing her mother never could: true love.
Urbach crafts a plausible and riveting continuation of a prominent classic that perfectly captures the essence of the era, yet at the same time has a modern, comfortable feel. Additionally, seeing the flashbacks through Berthe’s eyes, gives those who have not read Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary all the information they need—perhaps in an even more comprehensive and accessible manner.
Though the rags to riches story of the orphaned Berthe Bovary exhibits many Dickensian traits, with a pinch of Cinderella thrown in, there’s more than enough of Linda Urbach’s style and finesse, to provide just the right amount of catalyst that melds the smooth flowing prose into a coming-of-age story that is simply magnetic.
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Paperback: 512 pages
Publisher: Bantam; Original edition (July 26, 2011)
ISBN-13: 978-0385343879