Madame Bovary

Unhappy in her marriage to a good-hearted but dull village doctor, Emma Bovary yearns for a more glamorous life. Disenchanted with her husband and seeking an escape from their dull marriage she is soon tempted into a brief romantic liaison with another man. In her quest to realize her dreams Emma takes a lover, Rodolphe, and begins a devastating spiral into deceit and despair. Flaubert captures every step of this catastrophe with sharp-eyed detail and a wonderfully subtle understanding of human emotions.

The novel’s subject, the life of a very ordinary woman, and its technique, the amassing of precise detail, make Madame Bovary one of the crowning works in the development of the novel.