7Katarina Marinčič: AN EXAMPLE OF SUBTLE INTERTEXTUALITY
Katarina Marinčič UDK 821.111.09-312.4Cleeves A.:821.133.1Flaubert G.
Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana DOI: 10.4312/vestnik.17.7-18
Slovenia     Izvirni znanstveni članek
katarina.marincic@ff.uni-lj.si
AN EXAMPLE OF SUBTLE INTERTEXTUALITY: ECHOES OF 
FLAUBERT’S MADAME BOVARY IN ANNE CLEEVES’ TELLING 
TALES
ABSTRACT
The topic of this article is intertextuality in the novel Telling Tales by the British writer Anne 
Cleeves. Cleeves is one of the most successful contemporary authors of crime novels. She owes 
part of her fame to high-profile television adaptations of the Shetland and Vera series. However, 
her novels are not only cleverly crafted stories to suit a wide audience; they also cater for more 
sophisticated readers. In this article, we aim to show the multilayered nature of her writing by using 
the example of Telling Tales, a novel that is interwoven with thematic and even formal allusions 
to Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, although a reader who is not susceptible to intertextuality can enjoy 
the plot and denouement of a crime story even without it. Similarly, intertextual clues are easily 
missed in the television adaptation of the novel. But for the reader who catches the intertextual 
clues, they are certainly an enrichment. Anne Cleeves uses them as a means of psychological 
characterization, but they also serve as a starting point for reflection on reading. The author, who 
believes in the importance and even the therapeutic value of reading, allows for the possibility of 
a “bad”, harmful reading and reflects on it through the story of a side character whose attitude to 
books and life is reminiscent of Flaubert’s heroine.
Keywords: Anne Cleeves, Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, intertextuality, reading
IZVLEČEK
PRIMER PREFINJENE MEDBESEDILNOSTI: ODMEVI FLAUBERTOVE GOSPE BO-
VARY V ROMANU PRIPOVEDOVANJE ZGODB ANNE CLEEVES
Tema pričujočega članka je medbesedilnost v romanu Telling Tales (Pripovedovanje zgodb) bri-
tanske pisateljice Anne Cleeves. Anne Cleeves je ena najuspešnejših sodobnih avtoric kriminalnih 
8 VESTNIK ZA TUJE JEZIKE/JOURNAL FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGES
romanov. Del svoje slave dolguje odmevnim televizijskim priredbam (seriji Shetland in Vera). 
Vendar pa njeni romani niso le spretno izpisane zgodbe po okusu širokega občinstva, temveč za-
dovoljijo tudi zahtevnejše bralce. V članku želimo na primeru romana Telling Tales, ki ga avtorica 
preplete z vsebinskimi in celo formalnimi aluzijami na Flaubertov roman Gospa Bovary, prikazati 
večplastnost njenega pisanja. Bralec, ki za medbesedilnost ni dovzeten, lahko tudi brez nje uživa 
v zapletu in razpletu kriminalne zgodbe. Prav tako medbesedilne namige zlahka pogrešimo v te-
levizijski priredbi romana. Za bralca, ki medbesedilne namige prestreže, pa ti zagotovo pomenijo 
obogatitev. Anne Cleeves jih uporabi kot sredstvo psihološke karakterizacije, služijo pa ji tudi kot 
izhodišče za refleksijo o branju. Avtorica, ki verjame v pomen in celo terapevtsko vrednost branja, 
skozi zgodbo stranske junakinje, ki po svojem odnosu do knjig in življenja močno spominja na 
Flaubertovo junakinjo, v zgodbo pripusti tudi razmislek o “slabem branju”. 
Ključne besede: Anne Cleeves, Gustave Flaubert, Gospa Bovary, medbesedilnost, branje
1 WHAT DOES IT AMOUNT TO, THAT STORY?
What happens in Madame Bovary, what kind of woman is Emma? Does Flaubert’s novel 
have a message? In his controversial work The Craft of Fiction, Percy Lubbock provides 
some astonishingly clear answers to these questions. 
What does it amount to, that story? Charles Bovary, a simple and slow-witted 
young country doctor, makes a prudent marriage, and has the fortune to lose 
his tiresome and elderly wife after no long time. Then he falls in love with the 
daughter of a neighbouring farmer, a pretty and fanciful young woman, who 
marries him. She is deeply bored by existence in a small market town, finds a 
lover, wearies of him and finds another, gets wildly into debt, poisons herself 
and dies. (Lubbock, 1921, p. 64)
According to Lubbock, even an average reader, let alone a literary critic, should 
be able to determine without any hesitation what Flaubert wanted to say with his novel. 
Therefore, still according to Lubbock, Flaubert’s masterpiece offers itself as the ideal 
starting point for examining the writer’s “craft”, the way in which the story is presented.
[…] for my particular purpose, just now, there is no such book as his Bovary; 
for it is a novel in which the subject stands firm and clear, without the least 
shade of ambiguity to break the line which bounds it. The story of its treatment 
may be traced without missing a single link. […] He is not of those who present 
many aspects, offering the support of one or other to different critical doctrines; 
Flaubert has only one word to say, and it is impossible to find more than a sin-
gle meaning in it. (Lubbock, 1921, p. 60)
9Katarina Marinčič: AN EXAMPLE OF SUBTLE INTERTEXTUALITY
On the other hand, Lubbock is convinced that Tolstoy’s War and Peace, although a 
classical masterpiece, is much less suitable for this purpose. 
Not indeed that anybody’s hand is more delicate than Tolstoy’s at certain mo-
ments and for certain effects, and a critic is bound to come back to him again 
in connection with these. But we have seen how, in dealing with his book, 
one is continually distracted by the question of its subject; the uncertainty of 
Tolstoy’s intention is always getting between the reader and the detail of his 
method. (Lubbock, 1921, p. 59)
In his admiration of Flaubert’s famous book, Lubbock distances himself from his 
idol Henry James, who considered Madame Bovary to be little more than the most char-
acteristically French among French novels.
It is not in the temper of English vision to see things as M. Flaubert sees them, 
and it is not in the genius of the English Language to present them as he pre-
sents them. With all respect to Madame Bovary, Madame Bovary is fortunately 
an inimitable work. (James, 1893, pp. 253–254)
However, if Henry James did not share Lubbock’s admiration, he at least allowed for 
the possibility of different readings of Flaubert’s work, about which he also modified his 
opinion somewhat over the years (cf. Delbaere-Garant, 1970, pp. 149–159).
Lubbock’s point of view is all the more surprising since Flaubert’s contemporaries 
were already divided on the meaning and message of Madame Bovary. The question 
of whether the novel is moral or immoral was, as we know, debated in court, not just 
among readers and literary critics. Flaubert defended himself by claiming that his work 
was simply a faithful representation of reality. This opinion was echoed by Sainte-Beuve 
and George Sand, both staunch supporters of Flaubert. Sainte-Beuve stressed that a great 
work of art such as Madame Bovary simply cannot be immoral. The only fault he saw in 
the novel was its bleakness, its lack of anything to give hope, a total absence of any sort 
of kindness. 
Tout en me rendant bien compte du parti pris qui est la méthode même et qui 
constitue l’art poétique de l’auteur, un reproche que je fais à son livre, c’est que 
le bien est trop absent ; pas un personnage ne le représente. Le seul dévoué, 
désintéressé, amoureux en silence, le petit Justin, apprenti de M. Homais, est 
imperceptible. (Sainte-Beuve, 1858, p. 362)
Although she also felt that Flaubert was not explicit enough in his advocacy of good-
ness, George Sand believed that many readers had nevertheless grasped the implicit mor-
al lesson of the book.
10 VESTNIK ZA TUJE JEZIKE/JOURNAL FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGES
Il faut écrire pour tous ceux qui ont soif de lire et qui peuvent profiter d´une 
bonne lecture. Donc, il faut aller tout droit à la moralité la plus élevée qu´on ait 
en soi-même et ne pas faire mystère du sens moral et profitable de son œuvre. 
On a trouvé celui de Madame Bovary. Une partie du public criait au scandale, 
la partie la plus saine et le plus étendue y voyait une rude et frappante leçon 
donnée à la femme sans conscience et sans foi, à la vanité, à l´ambition, à la 
déraison. (Sand & Flaubert, 1904, pp. 443–444)
2 A PRETTY AND FANCIFUL YOUNG WOMAN
Like the novel, its heroine has been subject to different interpretations from the very 
beginning. George Sand, for example, judges her much more harshly than Sainte-Beuve 
who thinks that she was, at least initially and externally, an honest woman: 
Pendant quelque temps Madame Bovary est, de fait, une honnête femme, bien 
que son nom secret, tel qu´on le lirait déjà inscrit au dedans, soit perfidie et 
infidélité. (Sainte-Beuve, 1858, p. 292)
Lubbock considers Emma Bovary a completely insignificant person, for Mario Var-
gas Llosa she is a fascinating woman and, above all, an ideal literary heroine. 
Cuando desperté para retomar la lectura es imposible que no haya tenido dos 
certidumbres como dos relámpagos. Que ya sabía qué escritor me hubiera gus-
tado ser y que desde entonces hasta la muerte viviría enamorado de Emma 
Bovary. Ella sería para mí, en el futuro, como para el Léon Dupuis de la pri-
mera época, “l’amoureuse de tous les romans, l’héroine de tous les drames, le 
vague elle de tous les volumes de vers”. (Vargas Llosa, 1975, p. 5) 
Vladimir Nabokov sees the problem of Emma Bovary quite differently. Her story, 
which has no connection to reality anyway (according to Nabokov, no literature does) is 
not a story of rebellion, adultery, consumerism, etc., but simply a story of a misguided, 
harmful attitude towards literature. 
Some of the authors she knows are first-rate, such as Walter Scott or Victor 
Hugo; others not quite first rate, such as Bernardin de Saint-Pierre or Lamar-
tine. But good or bad this is not the point. The point is that she is a bad reader. 
She reads books emotionally, in a shallow juvenile manner, putting herself in 
this or that female character’s place. (Nabokov, 1980, p. 136)
In Julian Barnes’s Flaubert’s Parrot (1984), where allusions to Madame Bovary 
are only one, easily accessible layer of intertextuality, the protagonist-narrator, Geoffrey 
11Katarina Marinčič: AN EXAMPLE OF SUBTLE INTERTEXTUALITY
Braithwaite, a retired doctor and amateur connoisseur of Flaubert’s work, recalls his late 
wife Ellen during a trip to Normandy. There are quite a few, perhaps too many, clues that 
lead us to read Braithwaite’s story of an unhappy marriage as a “transposition” of the 
story of the Bovary couple. Braithwaite is a retired doctor, like Charles. His late wife’s 
name was Ellen; the initials EB are a clear allusion to Flaubert’s heroine. He loved her 
much more than she loved him, but he did not understand and still does not understand 
her. Like Emma Bovary, Ellen Braithwaite is or rather was a serial adulteress. And like 
Emma, she died by suicide. All these parallels between the doctor’s personal story and 
that of Madame Bovary point us towards a certain reading of Flaubert’s masterpiece. 
Madame Bovary can be transposed to modern times, because it is not essentially a novel 
about late 19th century French social reality, but a novel on eternal, universal themes.
A similar reading of Mme Bovary seems to be the starting point for the graphic novel 
Gemma Bovery (1999) by the British writer and cartoonist Possy Simmonds, which was also 
made into a film in 2014. Gemma Bovery is an English expatriate in Normandy. Like Flau-
bert’s Emma, she is dissatisfied with her overly passive husband and her life in general. Like 
Emma Bovary, she compensates for her dissatisfaction with consumerism and promiscuity. 
The parallels between Gemma’s and Emma’s story are noticed by the curious busybody baker 
Joubert, himself a parallel to Flaubert’s apothecary Homais. The baker sends Gemma a photo-
copy of Flaubert’s novel. By drawing her attention to the parallels, he sets the events in motion 
and causes Gemma’s death. In the aftermath, Joubert is tormented by a bad conscience. Day 
by day, he superstitiously awaits the death of Gemma’s husband Charles – until he realizes 
that the widower’s name is Cyrill, not Charles. At the end of the novel, an elderly couple 
moves into the house previously occupied by the Boverys. The wife’s name in Jane Eyre.
Woody Allen’s The Kugelmass Episode, another example of a variation on the theme 
of Madame Bovary, is also based on the idea that Emma could very well be a heroine of 
our time. Allen’s approach to Flaubert’s novel is significantly more playful than that of 
Posy Simmonds, but at the same time more complex, almost scholarly in its intertextual-
ity. Allen extends the intertextual clues to various interpretations of Flaubert’s novel, in-
cluding Lubbock’s. Like Lubbock, Professor Kugelmass does not find Tolstoy’s greatest 
novel suitable for his purpose. Like Henry James, he considers Madame Bovary to be the 
essence of Frenchness. The narrative of the love affair between Professor Kugelmass and 
Emma Bovary can certainly be read as a literary essay – albeit a very entertaining one. 
The protagonist, “a professor of humanities at City College”, realizes one day during 
a visit to a psychotherapist that something essential is missing in his life.
“I need to meet a new woman,” he went on. “I need to have an affair. I may 
not look the part, but I’m a man who needs romance. I need softness, I need 
flirtation. I’m not getting younger, so before it’s too late I want to make love in 
Venice, trade quips at 21, and exchange coy glances over red wine and candle-
light. You see what I’m saying?” (Allen, 1980, p. 25)
12 VESTNIK ZA TUJE JEZIKE/JOURNAL FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGES
The therapist warns Kugelmass that the point of therapy is to express and analyse 
desires, not to fulfil them. In any case, he is not capable of fulfilling them: he is a psychi-
atrist, not a magician. Kugelmann takes the hint and enlists the help of a magician called 
The Great Persky, who promises to transport him to the novel of his choice with the help 
of a magic cabinet.
“[…] If I throw any novel into this cabinet with you, shut the doors ant tap 
three times, you will find yourself projected into that book. […] So who do 
you want to meet? Sister Carrie? Hester Pryne? Ophelia? Maybe someone by 
Saul Bellow? Hey, what about Temple Drake? Although for a man of your age 
she’d be a workout.”
“French. I want to have an affair with a French lover.”
“Nana?”
“I don’t want to have to pay for it.”
“What about Natasha in War and Peace?”
“I said French. I know. What about Emma Bovary? That sounds to me perfect.” 
(Allen, 1980, p. 27)
With the help of the magician, Kugelmass is transported to Yonville and spends an 
afternoon with Emma. Later in the story, Emma returns the visit, transported in the same 
magic cabinet. The two lovers spend a few wonderful days in New York, staying at the 
Plaza Hotel. Emma especially enjoys the shopping. 
These strange events then appear in Madame Bovary, confusing some readers, stu-
dents and professors.
“I cannot get my mind around this,” a Stanford professor said “First a strange 
character named Kugelmass, and now she’s gone from the book. Well, I guess 
the mark of a classic is that you can reread it a thousand times and always find 
something new.” (Allen, 1980, p. 31)
The story gets (predictably) complicated when the magician’s cabinet starts malfunc-
tioning. Emma is stranded in New York, with dire consequences for the professor’s wal-
let. When the magician finally succeeds in sending Emma back to where she came from, 
Kugelmass wishes for a new and different adventure. He asks the magician to transfer him 
to Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint. The magic fails this time, with a tragic outcome for 
both the magician and Kugelmass. The cabinet explodes, the magician dies of a heart at-
tack, his house burns down. And as for Professor Kugelmass, he has “his own problems”. 
He had not been thrust into Portnoy’s Complaint, or into any other novel, for 
that matter. He had been projected into an old textbook, Remedial Spanish, 
and was running for his life over a barren, rocky terrain as the word tener (“to 
have”) – a large and hairy irregular verb – raced after him on its spindly legs. 
(Allen, 1980, p. 34)
13Katarina Marinčič: AN EXAMPLE OF SUBTLE INTERTEXTUALITY
3 I WRITE AS A READER, I THINK.
Anne Cleeves (1954) is one of Britain’s most successful contemporary crime novelists. 
Her novels, particularly the Inspector Jimmy Perez and Inspector Vera Stanhope se-
ries, are also well known for their television adaptations (Shetland (2013–2016); Vera 
(2011–2025)).
Despite their undeniable literary quality, Cleeves’ books can be described as reader 
friendly. It is therefore surprising, at least at first glance, that she refers to writing as “a 
selfish process”. However, as she makes very clear in a 2020 interview given to a blog-
ger, writerly egocentrism is not mutually exclusive with attention to the reader’s needs. 
Cleeves “writes the kind of books she would like to read”, she thus writes for herself, but 
for herself “as a reader”: 
When I’m writing I’m not really aware of the reader at all. It’s a very selfish pro-
cess. I write the book that I’d enjoy reading, I’m revelling in the process, in be-
coming my characters and seeing the world through their eyes. It’s a sophisticated 
form of a child playing make-believe. There’s nothing wrong with escapist fic-
tion, either as a reader or a writer. […] I write like a reader, I think. (https://www.
jayabhattacharjirose.com/i-write-like-a-reader-interview-with-ann-cleeves/)
Despite her self-proclaimed artistic egocentrism, Cleeves is also deeply convinced 
of the importance, even the therapeutic effects of reading. The successful project “Read-
ing for Wellbeing” that she initiated in 2020 is testimony to this.
To summarize. Anne Cleeves writes for her own pleasure, and thus indirectly for the 
pleasure of other readers. Identifying with the characters is an essential part of her writing 
process, as well as, according to her, a very common, normal, harmless, even beneficial 
reading response to fiction. 
For the topic of this article, and in relation to the above interpretations of Flaubert’s 
masterpiece, all of this is relevant for several reasons, and on more than one level.
Firstly, in her emphasis on the importance of identifying with literary heroes, Anne 
Cleeves is exactly what Vladimir Nabokov, using Emma Bovary as an example, calls 
“a bad reader”. This is especially important because the story of Cleeves’ novel Telling 
Tales, cleverly woven with intertextual allusions to Madame Bovary, is also, to some ex-
tent, that of a young woman unable to distinguish between real life and fiction. With her 
attitude to life, Emma Bennet is proof that not all reading is salutary.
Secondly, when we consider Anne Cleeves as a writer who is first and foremost a 
reader, we are explaining not only the reader-friendly character of her literature, but also 
her craftsmanship. To use Percy Lubbock’s expression: Anne Cleeves’ writing is “the 
craft of fiction” at its best.
One of the proofs of her erudition and technical brilliance is the skilful, subtle play 
she makes with intertextual allusions. For those who can read these literary clues, they 
14 VESTNIK ZA TUJE JEZIKE/JOURNAL FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGES
are sure to bring additional reading pleasure. They seem natural, unforced, and an organic 
part of the story, but understanding them is not necessary for the basic enjoyment of the 
text as a crime novel. The story and even the psychological development of the characters 
can be followed without them. As we shall see, Vera Stanhope gets to understand Em-
ma’s character without once thinking about Madame Bovary.
On the other hand: intertextual clues can be analysed without the need to provide 
the analysis with spoiler alerts. The television adaptation of the novel, the second in the 
Inspector Stanhope series, holds up without intertextual clues. On television, Emma Ben-
net’s personal story is reduced to a minimum. 
4 IT WAS ABOUT TIME SHE GOT A LIFE.
This is understandable. Emma Bennet is, in fact, a side character even in the book. She 
is a witness, a passive participant in the action, a person of secondary importance, even 
though the novel begins with her and from her point of view. Or perhaps: precisely be-
cause the novel begins with her and from her perspective.
Sitting at the bedroom window, Emma looks at the night-time square. The 
wind rattles a roof tile and hisses from the churchyard, spitting a Coke can into 
the street. There was a gale the afternoon Abigail Mantel died and it seems to 
Emma that it’s been windy ever since […]. It must be true at least since the 
baby was born. Since then, whenever she wakes at night to feed the baby or 
when James comes in late from work the noise of the wind is there […]. James, 
her husband, isn’t home yet, but she’s not waiting up for him. Her gaze is fixed 
on the Old Forge where Dan Greenwood makes pots. There’s a light at the 
window and occasionally she fancies she sees a shadow. She imagines that Dan 
is still working there, dressed in his blue canvas smock, his eyes narrowed as 
he shapes the clay with his strong, brown hands. Then she imagines leaving the 
baby, who is fast asleep, tucked up in his carry cot. She sees herself slipping out 
into the square and keeping go the shadows, walking across the forge. […] Dan 
Greenwood looks up. His face is flushed and there is red dust in the furrows 
of his forehead. He isn’t surprised to see her. He moves away from the bench 
where he’s working and stands in front of her. She feels her breath quicken. 
He kisses her forehead and then begins to unbutton her shirt. He touches her 
breasts, stroking them, so he leaves lines of red clay like warpaint. She feels the 
clay drying on her skin and her breasts become tight, slightly itchy. […] That 
was the story Emma told herself as she sat by her window the village of Elvet. 
A running commentary on her feelings, as if she was an outsider looking in. 
15Katarina Marinčič: AN EXAMPLE OF SUBTLE INTERTEXTUALITY
It was how it had always been in her life as a series of fairy tales. Before Mat-
thew had been born she’d wondered if his birth would make her more engaged. 
There was nothing more real, was there, than labour? But now […] she thought 
that wasn’t true. She was no more emotionally engaged with him than she was 
with James. (Cleeves, 2004, p. 4)
From the very first sentences of the novel, it is clear how much Emma Bennet resem-
bles Flaubert’s heroine. She is a young woman dissatisfied with her provincial life and 
her husband. She is a new mother who fails to attach to her child. She is a romantic in the 
Nabokovian sense of the word. And she is a bad reader in more than one way. It is obvi-
ous from her erotic fantasies that some of the authors she reads are “not quite first-rate”. 
She sees her life as a story, herself as a literary heroine. The essence of her frustration is 
that her life, and perhaps life in general, bears so little resemblance to literature. 
In some respects, however, her fate is very different from that of Flaubert’s heroine. 
Emma Bennet is married to a man she no longer loves, while he adores her. But her 
husband James is no Charles Bovary. He is successful, respected, and women find him 
attractive. He even has a dark secret, which adds to his appeal. He is not a boisterous man, 
but he is much more confident than Emma. 
As a passive, modest bystander through whose perspective we enter the story, Emma 
Bennet is not just an updated version of Emma Bovary. The opening scene of Telling 
Tales, in which Emma Bennet passively plays the lead role, is also a variation on the 
famous opening scene of Madame Bovary, centred on the awkward schoolboy Charles 
Bovary with his cap. So Emma Bennet is not only Emma, in some ways she is also 
“Charles”, a timid, frustrated observer. This particular intertextual clue is probably the 
most sophisticated one in the whole book, as it relates both to the content and to the nar-
rative technique. Emma’s passive character and the randomness of her successes remind 
one of Charles Bovary. Entering the story from the point of view of a slightly pathetic 
side character is reminiscent of Flaubert’s novel.
(In the TV series Inspector Vera Stanhope, most episodes start with an action-packed 
crime scene. After this scene and the opening music, Vera and her colleagues start in-
vestigating the crime. In the TV adaptation of the novel Telling Tales, the opening scene 
takes place not in Emma Bennet’s bedroom, but in the street, where another side charac-
ter is run over by a bus. The same side character, a young woman wrongly convicted of 
murder, does not even make an appearance in the novel. The reader, like the characters in 
the novel, only learns that she committed suicide in prison.)
Later in the novel, Anne Cleeves once again plays with a discreet yet recognizable 
intertextual allusion to the opening scene of Madame Bovary. In one of the few moments 
when Emma Bennet remembers that she once fantasized about her husband, he is carry-
ing his cap under his arm.
16 VESTNIK ZA TUJE JEZIKE/JOURNAL FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGES
The brass buttons on his jacket gleamed dully un the unnatural light. His head 
was bare. He carried his cap under his arm. Emma was reminded of when she 
had once had fantasies about him. (Cleeves, 2004, p. 6)
The most obvious allusion to Flaubert in Telling Tales is, of course, the fact that 
Emma Bennet is reading Madame Bovary. When James catches her with this book, she 
is uncomfortable.
Emma was in the living room. She’d lit a fire, he could smell the pine logs 
as soon as he came into the house. She was sitting in a big armchair, her legs 
tucked under her, and there was a book lying in her lap. Flaubert’s Emma 
Bovary in French. Her eyes were shut and her breathing was regular. When 
he approached her she stirred. […] He nodded at the book. “What’s this?” The 
question seemed to make her uncomfortable. “You know what they say about 
languages lose them or use them. I might want to go back to teaching. I don’t 
want to get rusty.”
“Good idea. Coffee?” (Cleeves, 2004, p. 50)
Emma Bennet studied Russian and French. As a Russian teacher, she also met James, 
who had enrolled in a Russian course for his naval job. So she might well have chosen 
one of Tolstoy’s novels to refresh her linguistic skills, or another French novel. But, like 
Percy Lubbock, like Allen’s Professor Kugelmass, she chooses Madame Bovary. This is 
certainly a clear hint, which may sensitize a few additional readers to the intertextuality 
in Telling Tales. Still, it is not so clear and intrusive that it would spoil the pleasure of the 
more sophisticated, literary-minded reader who likes to pick up subtler clues.
Anne Cleeves’ allusions to Madame Bovary go no further than this. Flaubert’s book, 
as already stated, plays no role in the unfolding of the crime story. Inspector Stanhope, 
a lucid, psychologically knowledgeable and compassionate person, but certainly not a 
typical reader of French novels, forms an opinion about Emma Bennet during the in-
vestigation. If the Inspector had a thorough literary education, she would perhaps have 
labelled Emma Bennet’s psychological state as a case of bovarysm. Since literature is not 
her field, she chooses a simpler, more general label, which in fact has a very similar, if 
not identical, meaning. Emma Bennet is like Emma Bovary, both Emmas live in fiction 
instead of reality. In both cases, the literature to which they have recourse is the subject 
of ironic ridicule. Emma Bovary, as Flaubert’s absent narrator lets us know, is a victim of 
“not quite-first rate” romanticism. Emma Bennet, as Inspector Stanhope points out, is in 
danger of becoming a victim of “Victorian melodrama”. 
Unlike the original Emma, Emma in Telling Tales may still have a chance to save 
herself. At the end of the novel, Anne Cleeves puts a wise thought in Inspector Stan-
hope’s mouth. This lesson, although clichéd, is psychologically plausible as something a 
person like Vera Stanhope might think. She is not without imagination, on the contrary, 
17Katarina Marinčič: AN EXAMPLE OF SUBTLE INTERTEXTUALITY
but her imagination is highly empathetic and extremely practical. As a detective, she re-
lies on imagination whenever mere observation fails. But her aim is always in reality. In 
the conclusion of the novel, the inspector notes, good-naturedly and slightly scornfully, 
that Emma Bennet would also benefit from a greater focus on real life.
Emma Bennet had returned home to James. She was sitting in the bedroom 
window, looking out over the square, apparently lost in thought. Like the her-
oine of some Victorian melodrama, Vera thought. 
It was about time she got a life. (Cleeves, 2004, p. 224) 
Stop reading, start living. This lesson may seem strange coming from the pen of a 
writer who, as we noted early on, believes in the usefulness and even in the therapeutic 
value of reading. But the contradiction is only superficial, as identifying bad, harmful 
reading is something we learn by reading. Anne Cleeves demonstrates this with the subtle 
intertextuality of her novel: an intertextuality that is an unobtrusive part of psychological 
characterization, and that recedes into the background when psychological plausibility 
demands it. Inspector Stanhope has probably not read Flaubert. Anne Cleeves read him 
very closely, so she knew when to abandon the intertextual play in favour of the inspec-
tor’s common sense.
[…] toutes les classes, tous les groupes humains ont leurs récits, et bien sou-
vent les récits sont goûtés en commun par des hommes de culture différente, 
voire opposée : le récit se moque de la bonne et de la mauvaise littérature. 
(Barthes, 1966, p. 1)
Cleeve’s Telling Tales illustrates and confirms Roland Barthes’ point of view: people 
with different cultural backgrounds can enjoy the same narrative. While Cleeves’ writing 
does not in any way fit the definition of “bad literature”, an educated reader is likely to 
be more sensitive to its literary qualities than an uneducated one. In other words: the 
pleasure of the reading is for everyone; the perception of quality depends on the reader. 
And finally, a superfluous remark: only a very good author can write such a multifaceted 
piece of literature.
18 VESTNIK ZA TUJE JEZIKE/JOURNAL FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Allen, W. (1980). Side Effects. Random House.
Barthes, R. (1966). Introduction à l’analyse structurale des récits. Communications, 8, 
1–27.
Cleeves, A. (2000). Telling Tales. Pan Macmillan.
Delbaere-Garant, J. (1970). Henry James: The vision of France. Les Belles Lettres.
James, H. (1893). French Poets and Novelists. Macmillan.
Lubbock, P. (1921). The Craft of Fiction. Jonathan Cape.
Nabokov, V. (1982). Lectures on Literature. Harvest.
Sainte-Beuve, C. A. (1858). Causeries du lundi. Garnier.
Sand, G., & Flaubert, G. (1904). Correspondance. Calman-Lévy.
Vargas Llosa, M. (1975). La orgía perpetua. Taurus.