Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

Madame Bovary (1856) is Gustave Flaubert's first published novel and is considered by many critics to be a masterpiece. The story Madame Bovary focuses on a doctor's wife, Emma Bovary, who has adulterous affairs and lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life. Though the basic plot is rather simple, even archetypal, the novel's true art lies in its details and hidden patterns. Gustave Flaubert was a notorious perfectionist and claimed always to be searching for le mot juste ("the right word"). When it was first serialized in La Revue de Paris between 1 October 1856 and 15 December 1856, the novel was attacked for obscenity by public prosecutors. The resulting trial, held in January 1857, made the story notorious.
After Gustave Flaubert's acquittal on 7 February 1857, Madame Bovary became a bestseller. Madame Bovary was published as a single volume in April 1857. Gustave Flaubert's masterpiece is now considered a seminal work of Realism and one of the most influential novels ever written. Madame Bovary takes place in provincial northern France, near the town of Rouen in Normandy. The story begins and ends with Charles Bovary, a stolid, kindhearted man without much ability or ambition. As the novel opens, Charles is a shy, oddly dressed teenager arriving at a new school amidst the ridicule of his new classmates. Later, Charles struggles his way to a second-rate medical degree and becomes an officier de santé in the Public Health Service. (Summary by Wikipedia)