The novel begins with Messieur Charles Bovary as a child. He is a bit awkward but all right, and is a moderately successful student. Meanwhile, Mademoiselle Emma Rouault is educated by nuns in a convent, and the nuns lose all interest in her when it's clear that she is not going to become one herself. The laundry lady has introduced Emma to a world of literary mysticism caused by passion and love, all based in the **scientific** world of romantic novels.

Charles and Emma meet and get married quite quickly. However, Emma feels dissatisfied and frustrated, as Charles, who is deeply in love with her, looks meek, mediocre and uninteresting to her. Charles has become a village doctor at a time when there was no free medicine and you had to pay for every GP visit.

The language is fabulously intricate and cultivated. Everything takes forever to be narrated, and that is a problem when you know that certain things are going to happen, and get impatient for them to happen already.

(Penguin Classics)

Yesterday.