The Memoirs is a semi-autobiographical book about an early unrequited love experienced by Flaubert. The fair Maria is older than him, married, and has no clue about her admirer's passion, let alone its intensity. Smitten beyond reason, the narrator examines his life, what is has been, and what it is-all under the lenses of passionate, carnal desire. His evocations become a raw and painful procession of gloomy, pessimist events. His love for the unattainable Maria exacerbates his solitude, plunging him into madness; hence, the title of the book. Despite the unfocused style, some meditations are written with unusual depth; especially, if one takes into account that the work was supposedly written when Flaubert was only seventeen years old.