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Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (Penguin, $9).Read about the other five titles on Martin's list.
In this testament to the dangers of a romantic education, Emma Rouault imagines love as “a great rosy-plumaged bird soaring in the splendors of poetic skies,” but husband Charles Bovary’s conversation is “flat as a sidewalk.” One day Rodolphe Boulanger, a local aristocrat, whispers to Emma, “Ah, but there are two moralities.”
Madame Bovary also made Louis Begley's list of favorite novels about cheating lovers.
--Marshal Zeringue