{"product_id":"9780857054708","title":"Madame Bovary of the Suburbs","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe story of a woman's life, from childhood to death, somewhere in provincial France, from the 1950s to just shy of 2025. She has doting parents, does well at school, finds a loving husband after one abortive attempt at passion, buys a big house with a moonlit terrace, makes decent money, has children, changes jobs, retires, grows old and dies. All in the comfort that the middle-classes have grown accustomed to. But she's bored. She takes up all sorts of outlets to try to make something happen in her life: adultery, charity work, esotericism, manic house-cleaning, motherhood and various hobbies - each one abandoned faster than the last. But no matter what she does, her life remains unfocussed and unfulfilled. Nothing truly satisfies her, because deep down - just like the town where she lives - the landscape is non-descript, flat, horizontal. Sophie Divry dramatises the philosophical conflict between freedom and comfort that marks women's lives in a materialistic world. Our heroine is an endearing, contemporary Emma Bovary, and Divry's prose will remind readers of the best of Houellebecq, the cold, implacable historian who paints a precise portrait of an era and those who inhabit it and in doing so renders existence indelibly absurd. Translated from the French by Alison Anderson\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"book-contributors\"\u003e\n  \u003cp class=\"contributor-item\"\u003e\n    \u003cspan class=\"contributor-role\"\u003eAuthor\u003c\/span\u003e\n    \u003ca href=\"\/search?q=Author+Sophie+Divry\" class=\"contributor-link\"\u003eSophie Divry\u003c\/a\u003e\n  \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Sophie Divry","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47376677535907,"sku":"9780857054708","price":240.0,"currency_code":"ZAR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0741\/7836\/3555\/files\/img_9780857054708_d6585ca0-deee-439c-9768-1ac49f1d6d21.jpg?v=1776515904","url":"https:\/\/graffitibooks.co.za\/products\/9780857054708","provider":"Graffiti Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}