Elif Shafak reimagines Flaubert through the women in his life and fiction
The Guardian reviews "In One Brief Moment All Eternity," a new novel in which Shafak views Gustave Flaubert through the eyes of figures including Emma Bovary.
The Guardian has published a review of Elif Shafak's new book, "In One Brief Moment All Eternity," describing it as a portrait of Gustave Flaubert built from the perspective of the women around him and in his fiction, including his most famous creation, Emma Bovary.
The reviewer frames the book within a long-running feminist debate over Flaubert's "Madame Bovary," citing Elena Ferrante's essay collection "Frantumaglia," in which Ferrante describes her own shifting judgment of Flaubert: at times dismissing him as a misogynist for the way he wrote Emma Bovary, at other times crediting him with letting his female characters voice what "women truly think and say and live but do not dare write."
According to the review, Shafak's book does not settle for a simple verdict on Flaubert either. The Guardian calls it Shafak's "love letter to literature in dark times," and notes that the novel treats Flaubert as a genuinely complex figure — doubting himself even in an era of confident male writers, and finding in his solitary work as a novelist a way of imagining lives and minds unlike his own.
No publisher, translation status or publication details beyond the review itself are given in the source material.
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