Written in 1998 and published at the New Zealand online literary site Southern Ocean Review, Theresa Jones is a modern day up-date of the Madame Bovary story. Theresa, however, lives in the fictional town of Ongara ...
Go to 'Teresa Jones' Southern Ocean Review (South Island, New Zealand, Issue 12 July 1999 edition). NB: image above appeared/appears with the original version of the story up at Southern Ocean Review and was drawn by artist Sandra Wolf. Copyright remains with Sandra Wolf.
This story was conceived as a modern-day up-date on the Madame Bovary story archetype developed via realism so powerfully by Gustave Flaubert - i.e. it thus explores the 'normative ennui' of many in the modern world.
A teenage boy struggling with the coming-of-age issues of sexuality, religion, and peer approval is overwhelmed, but soldiers on. After several years, he comes to understand the family forces that have left him so deeply troubled, and the process of
