Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert (Penguin Classics, 1964)

I had tried to read this book several years ago, but had not gotten beyond the opening pages.  This time I persevered and made it through.  It's a difficult book, very full of character and event but with very little narrative momentum or shape.  And most of the characters, including our hero Frederick Moreau, are flawed and not very sympathetic, and don't learn much or change or mature over the long course of the book.  What kept me reading was the beauty and vividness of Flaubert's prose.  The descriptions of clothes, interiors, landscapes -- everything, really -- are so good and so pleasurable to read that one continues reading merely to remain within the dazzling world of the book.  Sentimental Education lacks the perfect succinctness and coherence of Madame Bovary, but it is not without somewhat shaggy charms and pleasures of its own.