Zoladdiction 2021: La Debacle by Emile Zola

It's April and that means Fanda's annual Zoladdiction, a celebration of the life and works of Emile Zola (1840-1902). After putting it off for several years, this time I decided to tackle La Debacle, the pentultimate work in his Rougon-Macquart cycle. A story of fictional people in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, it's considered one of the best war novels of all time, and was Zola's most popular novel when it was published in 1892.

I've been really daunted by this one because it's by far his longest, more than 500 pages, and honestly, I am not a fan of war novels. I'm very bad at following extended action scenes in novels, and I'm much more interested in the social aspects of wartime than of military strategy and maneuvers. I'm normally good at picturing descriptions of scenery and landscapes in my head as I read, but if there's any kind of action, my mind tends to wander. So I was not looking forward to 514 pages of battle scenes.

However, I persevered. The story begins in August of 1870. After the Second Empire declared war on Prussia, the French were pushed back over the borders of western France, in the Alsace-Lorraine region. The main characters of the story are Jean Macquart, who has rejoined the military as a corporal after the disastrous events of La Terre (The Earth); and the soldiers in his regiment, mostly Maurice, who is of a higher class, but is a less experienced soldier. At first Maurice is condescending to Jean, but eventually they become close friends after Jean looks out for him during the course of the war. 

As the story begins, the French had planned to march on Berlin and assert dominance over the Germans, but are quickly pushed back by the superior and more organized Prussian army. (The French were so confident of victory they only brought maps of Germany, and none of western France, leading to mass confusion). Much of the first quarter of the book consists of various regiments basically marching around France, not knowing exactly what's going on, and trying to find food and shelter from terrified and suspicious peasants and villagers. It's pretty much a disaster. 

Portrait of Zola, 1902, Felix Vallotton

We finally get to the actual battles in the second quarter of the book, with a lot of battle descriptions in the fields outside the towns, and the siege of the town of Bazeilles, home of Henriette Weiss, the twin sister of Maurice. After Maurice and Jean take a night's rest inside the Weiss home, the story begins to follow Henriette and her husband, and his employer Delaherche, the owner of a dye factory where the military sets up a temporary hospital. There's also another side character, another soldier in their company called Honore, whose heart was broken when his father wouldn't let him marry the girl he loved, Silvine. Silvine was devastated and has since had child by a Prussian jerk named Goliath, who then refused to marry her. However, Honore still loves her and ironically, Silvine and the child are now living at his father's farm as she has nowhere else to go.

For me the book really picked up when it was more character-driven. Zola is really good at creating realistic characters, and his depiction of how the war affected the civilian population was really good. Of course I'm always more interested in the social aspect than the military and political side. My mind did tend to wander when Zola was describing all the political events and military maneuvers as the war goes from bad to worse for the French, and the Prussians take over. 

The fighting doesn't stop, however, and Weiss ends up going back to Paris. Unbeknownst to all of them is the upcoming siege of Paris and the Paris commune! Things are going to get worse! The short version is that after a months-long siege of Paris by the Prussians, overthrow their own government and all hell breaks loose inside the city, culminating in a bloody week when more than 20,000 people died and much of the city burned to the ground. I've been to Paris several times and I am aghast that I had no idea that this happened.

Despite all the politics and warfare, I ended up really liking this book, though it's a lot to take. There is a LOT of violence and pretty detailed descriptions of deaths on the battlefront, executions, wartime hospitals (including amputations), disposing of bodies, and just general unpleasant things that happen in wartime. Might not be the best choice if you like to read and eat at the same time. 

The hardest parts for me to read were definitely the military actions and the history of the politics that were going on, culminating in the Paris commune. I was a history major but I haven't read that much academic history for a long time, and Zola crams in a lot of facts, names, dates, and places, and it was tough to keep everything straight. I absolutely understand why he had to include all of it, but it wasn't my favorite part of the book.  I read the Oxford World's Classics edition, pictured above, which includes a lot of resources in the endnotes, timelines, and maps, which were great. There's also a list of the characters, the first one I've seen in a Zola novel. 

Until I started reading this, I also didn't realize that much of the action takes place a fairly short distance from where I spent three years in Germany! There's a lot of mentions of cities and towns that I actually visited, like Strasbourg and Metz, which are a fairly easy drive from our house in the Rhineland. I'm quite sorry now that I didn't read this while I was living there -- I certainly would have paid closer attention while I was on day trips and maybe even tried to trace the route of the armies. (It makes sense why the U. S. military built an enormous base nearby for its strategic location.) And I visited Paris multiple times when we lived there, but not once did I visit Place Vendome and many of the other important sites mentioned. I guess I'll just have to go back someday! 

I'm counting this as my Classic in Translation for the Back to the Classics Challenge. Thanks again to Fanda for hosting Zoladdiction 2021 and inspiring me to finally read this book!

Zoladdiction: A Love Story by Emile Zola (And a Giveaway!)

The trouble with polyreading is that when I jump around from book to book, it takes me forever to finish anything -- and then I have a pile of books to review! I finally finished another book by Emile Zola -- A Love Episode, the eighth book in his Rougon-Macquart series. I know it's the very end of the month, but I definitely wanted to finish this for the Zoladdiction readalong hosted by Fanda.

It's the story of Helene Grandjean, a young widow who is about thirty in the start of the novel. After the death of her husband, Helene and her young daughter Jeanne move to Passy (which is now part of the 16th Arrondissment of Paris, on the northwest side of the city). In the beginning of the novel, the sickly Jeanne has a life-threatening seizure, and the frantic Helene bangs on the door of her neighbor who is also her new landlord. Luckily, her new landlord is a physician, the handsome Dr. Deberle. He attends Jeanne and pulls her through the crisis, sitting by her bedside for hours with her mother.

During Jeanne's recovery, Helene and her daughter are often invited to the home of the Deberles and to spend time in their beautiful garden. Helene also spends time with some of the poor parishioners in the area, including a crafty old woman called Madame Fetu, who is also attended by Dr. Deberle. Helene and the doctor spend several days together after Mme Fetu falls ill, and they begin to form a bond.

Portrait of Emile Zola by Felix Vallotton

This becomes awkward as Helene is also friendly with Deberle's wife, the kind if somewhat flighty socialite Juliette. Helene struggles with her growing feelings for Deberle, and meanwhile her friend Abbe Jouve, the priest, is pressuring her to marry his brother, the faithful and patient Monsieur Rambaud. Meanwhile, her daughter Jeanne can sense something is happening between her mother and the doctor.

It's a good story, though not my favorite of the series. It's one of Zola's slower novels, and it's definitely a domestic drama. There are some lighter moments that I really enjoyed, especially with Helene's servant Rosalie, and her fiance, Zephyrin, who provide most of the comic relief of the novel. They were actually my favorite characters and I wish Zola had written more about them. 

A Love Episode is also a love letter to Paris. Helene spends a lot of time gazing at the view of the Paris from her apartment -- apparently she could see all of Paris, including the Seine, Les Invalides, and the Pantheon. It must have been a spectacular view, especially at night: 

In the dormant sea of blackness before them, there was a glimmer of light. It was below them, somewhere in the abyss, in a place they could not precisely identify. And one after the other the different lights started winking. They came to life at night with a sudden start, all at once, and remained there glittering like stars. It seemed as though there was a new rising of heavenly bodies on the surface of a dark lake. Soon there was a double row of them making a pattern which led from the Trocadero towards Paris in little leaps of light. Then other lines of luminous dots cut into that line, you could make out curves, a whole constellation that was getting larger, strange and magnificent. 

A Love Episode is the twelfth book I've completed in the Rougon-Macquart series -- so far I've read fourteen of his works altogether (the other two are Therese Raquin and The Attack on the Mill and Other Stories.) Compared to the rest of the series, it's pretty good, though not quite up to the quality of Germinal, L'Assommoir, or La Bete Humaine. However, I'd say it's definitely a good introduction to his work if you're looking for something shorter and slightly less intense.

And now for the giveaway! A couple of years ago, the nice people at Oxford World's Classics starting sending me copies of some of their new releases, mostly Zola (and thanks to Simon at Stuck in a Book for passing my name along.) Somehow I received two copies of A Love Story and so I'm going to share my good fortune and give away my extra copy! All you need to do is leave a comment below telling me why you want to read this book. The winner will be chosen in a completely unscientific manner -- I'm going to pick my favorite response, so be creative!

Guidelines for the drawing are as follows:

• Winner must live in the United States or Europe (due to postage costs)
• If your blog doesn't have an email link so I contact you, include an email in your comment 
• The deadline to enter is 11:59 p.m. Western Europe Time Zone (GMT +1) on Monday, May 7.

I'm counting this as my Classic in Translation for the Back to the Classics Challenge.

The Conquest of Plassans by Emile Zola

I'm getting near the end of the Back to the Classics Challenge and I'm much farther behind than I planned. The other day I was looking for a good short book and I decided it was time to read something in translation. It had been more than two years since I read anything by Emile Zola so I chose The Conquest of Plassans -- partly because it was short; partly because it was French; and partly because I loved the cover (and I've actually seen the original painting from that edition, The Orange Trees by Gustave Caillebotte. It's at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston).

So. Set in the provincial town of Plassans in Provence, this is the story of Abbe Faujus, a mysterious clergyman who arrives in town with his mother and rents rooms from the Mouret family. Monsieur Francois Mouret is related to the Maquarts, and his wife, Marthe, was a Rougon. There are a lot of gossipy characters with nothing much to do other than speculate about the lives of their neighbors. Somehow Abbe Faujus manages to say very little about himself and yet others start talking to him and spill all kinds of secrets.

Eventually Faujus is able to gain the trust of the townspeople and local church hierarchy. He begins to claw his way to the top politically and socially and gain power over many of the locals, some of whom don't appreciate his influence. In particular, Francois Mouret becomes jealous and suspicious regarding the influence Faujus has over his wife Marthe, who becomes incredibly pious and obsessed with religion. 

Meanwhile, Faujus shady sister Olympe and her ne'er-do-well husband also arrive in town and threaten to expose all kinds of family secrets. They ingratiate themselves in the Mouret household which doesn't bode well. This being a Zola novel, a lot of these characters are basically train wrecks. 

The Conquest of Plassans is the fourth in Zola's Rougon-Macquart cycle, and the eleventh of the series I've read so far. Normally I tend to read series books in order, but when I started reading Zola about five years ago, some of the earliest books in the series weren't available in good English translations. (Luckily, Oxford World's Classics has been publishing excellent translations, like the one  I read). I'd heard that most of the books are really stand-alone novels that are loosely linked.

I'd already read the second and third novels, which are set in Paris, but this novel is set in Plassans, which is also the setting of the very first novel in the series. There are a lot of references to events from the first book especially in the endnotes. If you don't want any spoilers for the first novel, I would definitely recommend reading it before you read this one -- I was really regretting not having read The Fortunes of the Rougons first, especially since my library in Texas owned a copy. But buying a copy of the first book from Amazon didn't seem practical since the mail takes longer now that I'm overseas.

This book was OK but it won't rank with my favorites in the Rougon-Macquart series. I think some of his later books are really better. This one felt like it was kind of all over the place plot-wise. There's a whole sub-plot about political intrigues that basically went over my head, and I don't know if I just wasn't paying close enough attention, or if I should have done more research about the Second Empire, but either way I found it confusing. In general, I thought the drama centered around the families was the strongest part of the book, but I tend to enjoy stories about domestic life.  I also didn't like the way most of the female characters were portrayed. To be fair, the male characters were also awful, and Zola is a product of his time, but a couple of the women's portrayals were pretty sexist and made me really uncomfortable. 

I think in a way I put off reading this book because my last experience with Zola was not great -- a lot of people love Nana, but I really disliked it and it kind of put me off Zola for a while. I'd read ten of his books and I think I was worried that I'd read all the good ones already and the rest would be disappointing. Maybe there's a reason that some of Zola's novels don't have many good English translations. And in general, is it better to read an author's best work first, or should you save it for last? Bloggers, what do you think? 

I'm counting this as my Classic in Translation for the Back to the Classics Challenge. 

Nana by Emile Zola

Well, I didn't think it could happen, but it did.  Zola has disappointed me, in a very big way.  Nana is the twelfth book by Zola that I've completed, and the tenth in his epic Rougon-Macquart cycle, and this is the one I've liked the least, by far.  It's also the one that took me the longest.  Usually I zip through a Zola novel in a week, sometimes just a couple of days, but this one just dragged for me -- it was more than a month from start to finish, because I just couldn't get into it.

Nana is one of Zola's most famous novels, but for those who are not familiar, it's the eponymous story of a courtesan and sometime actress named Nana who becomes the most talked-about, scandalous woman in Paris.  She's kind of like a cross between Helen of Troy, Madonna and Kim Kardashian.  Men are obsessed by her, and she drives many of her lovers to financial ruin, or even worse.  Nana is an addiction, a succubus -- men are trapped by her spell, and will stop at nothing to satisfy her every whim.

Overall, I found this to be a really sordid, depressing tale.  I've read a dozen novels by Zola so far, and believe me, he is the master of writing about awful people in unpleasant situations.  However, I think this is the first book where I didn't care about a single one of the characters at all.  Usually there's someone whose story both repels and fascinates me enough to keep reading, but this book took me more than a month to finish, I was so disinterested.  Usually I'll finish a Zola book in a few days, normally not more than a week.  Nana just dragged on and on.  I hated everyone, and I thought they all deserved what was coming to them.  (I would have given up, but I kept hoping it would get better, so I finally plowed through it.)

I was also really disappointed by the writing.  Most of the time Zola writes really tight plotlines; this one seemed all over the place, lacking in focus. It started out in a theater, where a new production of a play is about to premiere.  Nana is described as not being able to act or sing, but somehow, her presence is so electrifying, people can't stop watching her.  Then the story shifts to Nana's sideline as a prostitute -- she's still turning tricks on the side, since she can't support herself as an actress.  There are subsequent chapters about Nana's love affair with a count, and how she essentially ruins his life.  The only chapter I actually liked is one where Nana and her entourage attend the races at Longchamps, which was very interesting and well-written (I've had a soft spot for horse racing ever since I read all the Dick Francis mysteries years ago.)  Finally, the last chapter was just wretched.

Another thing that really bothered me was an unpleasant sub-plot about Nana and her love affair with an abusive boyfriend.  It was really painful to read, and it just didn't seem to fit the character.  Even though she's vile, Nana is mostly a strong personality, strong enough to dominate men and bend them to her will, yet this horrible actor slaps her around and she seems to enjoy it.  I'm no expert on women in abusive relationships, but it just didn't make sense to me.  Plus, there are constant references to Nana's genitalia, and how she's using her sexuality to control men -- I just got tired of reading about it.  Zola has written some books that were very shocking for their time, but this one must have been the epitome of the racy French novel.  I got the feeling that Zola was writing some of it just for shock value.

I should really go and research more about the background of this book to get more of the metaphors.  (I usually go back and read the introduction until after I've finished a book, since I hate spoilers.)  I've heard this book is really a scathing satire about the decline of Paris during the time period, but I just don't care enough to find out.  If this were my first experience reading Zola, I don't think I'd ever read another one of his books again, ever.  I still own copies of three other Zola novels -- The Dream, The Debacle, and Money, and I'm really hoping that they're better than this one.

I am counting this as my Classic in Translation for the Back to the Classics Challenge.

The Earth by Emile Zola

Classics Spin #4!!!

I was so happy to get The Earth by Zola as my random selection (I was convinced it was going to be The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens).  I couldn't wait until the end of December to read this, so I've been sitting on this review since before Christmas.  And once again, Zola blows me away.

The Earth is #15 of the twenty novels of the Rougon Macquart series; but like most of the series, it's essentially a stand-alone novel. Set in the 1860s in rural France, not far from Paris, this is the story of two families living in a farming village, Rognes, and the plot seems loosely based on the Shakesperean tragedy King Lear.  The Rougon-Macquart connection is introduced to the readers with a day laborer, Jean Macquart, who has come to the village after serving in the Army.  Jean befriends a young girl, Francoise, who lives with her older sister Lise.  Lise is pregnant by her boyfriend, Buteau, but he refuses to make an honest woman of her.

Buteau's family quickly becomes the focus of the novel.  Buteau is the youngest child of three, and the primary action centers around Buteau's parents.  His father, Fouan, owns a good bit of land, and has decided to split it between his three children now, instead of after his death, to avoid inheritance taxes.  In return, Fouan and his wife will continue to live in their house and receive an annuity until they die.  Sounds generous, right?  Wrong!  The three siblings -- Buteau;  his drunkard brother, Hyacinthe (nicknamed "Jesus Christ") and his sister Fanny (and her husband Delhomme) can't come to an agreement about who gets which plots and how much their parents deserve to be paid for the rest of their lives (which would include firewood, wine, and various other allowances).  It's all very petty and they're haggling and bickering about it. Finally it all seems settled.

Meanwhile, Jean becomes closer to Lise and Francoise, but things take an interesting twist.  He's in love with Francoise, but feels obligated to marry Lise because she's older and has an illegitimate child.   Basically, everyone is greedy, jealous and bitter about the land they didn't get, they're all trying to wheedle more money out old Fouan, and there are several love triangles, some of them sort of icky.  The other people in the neighboring farms are just as unpleasant.  Since this is a Zola novel, things quickly spiral out of control and go from bad to worse, but it's still fascinating stuff.  Even though most of the characters are awful, I couldn't stop reading it since I absolutely had to find out how the story would turn out.  And two of the characters, Lise and Buteau, are some of the worst creations in the entire Zola canon.  Seriously, I cannot recall a nastier pair.

For the record, this book is really not for the faint of heart, or those easily offended.  This being a rural community, there's a lot of barnyard humor, much if it centering around reproduction (both animals and humans) and bodily functions.  Plus, Zola doesn't mince words, at least not in this modern translation -- I read the Penguin classic translated by Douglas Parmee.  This must have been shocking stuff back in the 1800s -- there's quite a lot of sex and violence for a classic novel.

Zola considered The Earth to be his greatest work.  I don't think it's nearly as famous or popular today as Germinal -- not that I'd call any of his works terribly popular, at least not in the U.S.! When I checked Goodreads, there were only 586 ratings for The Earth, compared to more than 10,000 for Germinal and more than 8,600 for the next most popular, Nana, which I still haven't read.  I'm hoping Zola will get the attention he deserves -- The BBC television series "The Paradise" is based on The Ladies' Paradise, which I read last summer, and I noticed there were quite a few people on the waiting list for it at the library.  And there's another Rougon Macquart novel in a new translation!  Money (L'Argent), the 18th book in the series, is schedule for publication by Oxford World's Classics in March, so I'm looking forward to that.

Did anyone else read Zola for the Classics Spin?  Did you like your Spin selections? And most importantly, when is the Classics Club going to do it again?

The Ladies' Paradise by Emile Zola

Slowly, but surely, I am working my way through the entire Rougon-Macquart cycle of novels by Emile Zola.  My eighth effort was The Ladies' Paradise, the eleventh novel in the series.  Loosely based on the famous Bon Marche department store in Paris, this is the story of Denise Baudu, a poor shopgirl of twenty who has come to Paris from the provinces, hoping for a job.  Her parents have both died, and she has two younger brothers to support -- Jean, 16, who's a bit of a ne'er-do-well and already a womanizer; and little Pepe, who is only five.

After her parents passed away, Denise was promised a job by her uncle, who owns a draper's shop in Paris.  Unfortunately, by the time Denise arrives unannounced, business is very bad, mostly because of the expansion of the nearby department store complex, Au Bonheur Des Dames (aka The Ladies' Paradise) which is swallowing up nearby small businessmen, then undercutting them and putting them out of business.  (Sound familiar?)  It's owned by Octave Mouret, the playboy from the previous novel, Pot-Bouille.  He's now a widower who inherited pots of money from his late wife, and has invested all the money into the store, creating a store like no other, at which you can get absolutely everything you need.

Jean has an apprenticeship and goes off on his own (and repeatedly gets into romantic entanglements); Pepe is boarded with some neighbors, but Denise is forced out of desperation to take a job at the evil incarnate, Au Bonheur des Dames.  Her uncle is furious but what can she do?  Mouret has also gone back to his playboy ways, and has his eye on Denise, who blooms as she becomes a skilled shop worker.

Like the train in La Bete Humaine, the main character in this book is the department store itself -- it's basically a satirical look on consumerism and the rise of the very first big-box stores.  I could not help thinking of Wal-Mart as I read this, and how it has squeezed on so many independent retailers.  Zola uses the novel to satirize consumerism, greed, and the rising power of women in the retail market.   I was also struck, over and over, how history is repeating itself with big box stores like Wal-Mart, though I'm pretty sure the employees at Au Bonheur Des Dames are treated better than Wal-Mart employees!

However, the characters themselves aren't that well developed, and I found Denise in particular to be a little too good to believe, too forgiving and long-suffering.  I've seen a lot of this type in Trollope novels lately and it's beginning to get on my nerves.  I suppose it's a Victorian trope, though at least the young women in Trollope and Zola aren't nearly as bad as the ones in Dickens' novels.

The Paradise series on BBC.  

The Ladies' Paradise (#11 in the series, and the eighth I have completed) is fairly popular for a Zola novel, though nowhere near Germinal or Therese Raquin.  You'd think the subject, shopping and commercialism, would make it more popular.  I was inspired to pick this up by my recent binge-watch of Mr. Selfridge -- the entire series had been taking up space on my DVR for several months.  I've also heard that The Ladies' Paradise was adapted into a BBC series called The Paradise, and I've just discovered it will begin airing on PBS here in the States on October 6!!  The folks at BBC know how we Yanks love those British period dramas!

Anyway, it was interesting and entertaining, but not nearly as good as Germinal or La Bete Humaine, which are my favorites by Zola so far -- I'd rank it as a second-tier Zola novel, closer to The Belly of Paris or Pot-Bouille.  Still, worth reading, especially if you like shopping and fashion, or if you're in withdrawal from Mr. Selfridge.  I have a feeling I'll see more blog postings about it in the fall after the TV show starts to air.

Paris in July 2013

Well, once again I have signed up for the Paris in July blogging event -- I think this is the third year in a row!!  Naturally, I have a long list of books I'd like to read, but this year, I'm going to try and be completely realistic.  I'm going to try and read only books from my own shelves, and I've narrowed it down to just three:

Marie Antoinette:  The Journey by Antonia Fraser

This has been on my TBR shelves for awhile, and I've really been excited about nonfiction lately.  After reading Catherine the Great, I'm even more intrigued by royal biographies.  Plus the library has an audiobook copy, so I can get ahead while driving to and from work.

The Scapegoat by Daphne du Maurier

This was a birthday (or was it Christmas?) gift a few years ago -- I put a bunch of du Mauriers on a wishlist and my husband bought this for me.  This one is about a man who meets his doppelganger at a train station.  He's English and his double is French.  The other guy takes over his life and so the Englishman has no choice but to step into the Frenchman's shoes.

One of these books by Emile Zola -- this will be third July in a row that I've included Zola!  Last year it was L'Assommoir and in 2011 I read Germinal.  Here are my choices for this year:

The Ladies' Paradise -- about the rise of a Paris department store and commercialism among the French population.  It includes some of the same characters from Pot-Bouille, which I really enjoyed.  And I still have the entire series of Mr. Selfridge saved on the DVR, which might behoove me to choose this one.

Nana -- the story of a Paris courtesan.  The title character is the daughter of the ill-fated Gervaise, the laundress from L'Assommoir, and the sister of Claude Lantier from The Masterpiece and Etienne Lantier from Germinal.  It's considered one of Zola's best in the Rougon-Macquart series.

La Terre (The Earth) -- I've read that this one was Zola's favorite among his works.  It's about a rural family and is reminiscent of King Lear.

La Debacle -- a war novel about the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune of 1870-1871.  I've heard this has some of the most realistic descriptions of war in literature.

Le Reve (The Dream) -- a gift from my good friend Amanda, who is the one responsible for my love for Zola.  She says this is unlike any of his other books.  And it's short, a little more than 200 pages.

I have several other books by French writers or set in France, but I'm going to try and be completely realistic and stick to three books off this list -- one (or more!) by Zola; a nonfiction book; and a more contemporary mystery/thriller.   I think it's a good mix and hopefully I'll be able to finish all of them!

What do you think, bloggers?  Good selections?  Which Zola should I read?  Has anyone else signed up for Paris in July?  What are you reading?

L'Assommoir by Emile Zola

Well.  I have really been out of the blogging loop the past week or so, as I have been on vacation in beautiful California.  First, I was visiting my baby nephew in San Diego and then a side trip with my youngest child to Disneyland.  Believe it or not, I actually got some reading done.

So what did I read on vacation?  Light, fluffy beach reads?  Murder mysteries?  Something by a California author, at least?  Well, I did bring one book by John Steinbeck, but I never even cracked a page of it.  Instead, I spent my vacation reading a book about poor French people who drink themselves to death! Yes, dear readers, my choice for a light vacation read was L'Assommoir by Emile Zola, also known as The Drinking Den.  Fun stuff!

What happened was this.  I had a big stack of French books and Victorians to choose from for vacation reads, lighter stuff mostly -- including The Ladies' Paradise by Zola, an ode to shopping and consumerism (perfect for Disneyland, right?)  Well, on a whim, I grabbed L'Assommoir off the shelf to read a few pages while I had my lunch.  I'd been putting this Zola off because it sounded absolutely dreary, but during lunch,  I read the first chapter and I was completely hooked, so I HAD to bring the book on vacation, because I had to know what happened next.  

Here's the setup:  Set in the mid-19th century, Gervaise Macquart is a young woman of twenty-two, living in seedy hotel in Paris.  In the book's first pages, she's anxiously waiting up all night for her lover, Auguste Lantier, the father of her two young sons.  He finally arrives home at the crack of dawn after drinking and carousing all night; meanwhile, she's pawning all her possessions so they can eat.  She goes out to do some laundry and meanwhile Lantier skips town with practically everything she owns.  (Her reaction to this news while doing laundry is pretty priceless; the book is worth reading for this chapter alone).

Gervaise is no quitter, and pulls herself up by her bootstraps and works hard as a laundress.  Eventually, she marries a roofer named Coupeau, who seems like an upstanding, non-drinking guy.  After a rather rocky wedding day (another great chapter!), things are going pretty well for her.  She and Coupeau are both working, he's a good father figure, and she's ready to go into business on her own.  Sadly, she's surrounded by jealous gossips who take advantage of her and stab her in the back at a moment's notice -- and then her old lover Lantier shows up and worms his way back into her life.  She and Coupeau start on a downward spiral that is horribly depressing yet so engrossing I could not stop reading it.

I've read a lot of books with characters that I like to call fascinating train wrecks, but Gervaise has to be one of the worst -- but Zola writes her and her situation so well.  The characters seem so real that sometimes I just want to jump into the book and give them a good shaking.  Her life is hard but things are looking up until she makes one stupid decision after another.  I wanted to slap her upside the head like Cher slaps Nicolas Cage in Moonstruck (one of my favorite movies of all time):

If you've read any Zola before, this book combines the train wreck aspects of La Bete Humaine with the nasty backbiting characters of Pot-Bouille, in a Paris apartment complex in a working-class neighborhood.  It's the seventh in the Rougon-Macquart cycle, and though the characters are related to others in the series, it's fine to read as a stand-alone book -- Gervaise is the mother of Nana, the eponymous main character in book #9; and also of Claude, the artist in The Masterpiece (#14); Jacques,  the engine driver in La Bete Humaine; and Etienne, the mine worker in Germinal (#13).  Of those, I've only read La Bete Humaine and Germinal, both of which I loved, so it was interesting to read about their childhoods and how Zola was setting up these characters for the later books.

Based on the title, I thought this book was going to be incredibly depressing and dreary, and this is somewhat true --there are some scenes of people drinking that are pretty awful and even nauseating, but they're only a small part of the book; from the title, I thought the entire 400+ pages was going to be about people sitting around a bar getting soused.  Also, the ending is pretty sad, but that didn't surprise me -- I've read seven novels by Zola so far and not a single one has a happy ending!   However, Zola is so good at weaving these tales I can't stop reading them.

Has anyone else read this novel?   Did you find it incredibly depressing?  And is it strange that Zola writes these amazing books about such wretched people?  And does anyone else take classics on vacation?

Paris in July

Once again, Karen from Bookbath and Tamara from Thyme for Tea are hosting Paris in July!  This a really fun event.  The guidelines are easy -- no minimums, just blogging about pretty much anything French-inspired, including reading French books, watching French movies, eating French food [!!] or reminiscing about French travel experiences.  What's not to like?

It was so much fun reading books about France last year, and I loved discovering so many new books on the blogosphere.  Of course, I'll be participating again.  This year I'm going to try and coordinate my French reads with my remaining challenge books and with the Victorian celebration -- and of course, I'm always trying to read books off the TBR shelves!

Here are some possible titles from my own shelves:

The Scapegoat by Daphne du Maurier
The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy
Bel Ami by Guy de Maupassant
Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert
Arsene Lupin, Gentleman Thief by Maurice Leblanc
Summer Will Show by Sylvia Townsend Warner

Plus, I'm definitely going to read another book by Emile Zola.

I still have several unread:

The Earth
The Ladies' Paradise
L'Assommoir (The Drinking Den)
The Masterpiece
Nana


And there are a few that I might check out from the library:

Clochemerle by Gabriel Chevallier
A Novel Bookstore by Laurence Cosse
Chez Moi by Agnes Desarthe
Zazie in the Metro by Raymond Queneau
Bonjour, Tristesse by Francoise Sagan

Ideally, I'd like to read at least four, but two or three would be great too -- if I complete one from each list, I'll be happy.

And I'd like to watch some French movies as well.  I have a long list I've never seen, including:

La Bete Humaine
The Class
I've Loved You So Long
Kings of Pastry
My Father's Glory
Paris, Je T'aime
Queen Margot
Queen to Play
Seraphine
A Town Called Panic

How about you, bloggers?  Anyone else signing up?  What are you reading?  And which of these books do you recommend?

The Kill by Emile Zola; and a painting by Edouard Manet

This weekend, while on a flight to our nation's capital, I finally finished my seventh book by Zola: The Kill, the second of his Rougon-Macquart series.  I have to admit, I was a bit disappointed in this book.  The last three novels I read by Zola were so well crafted and such great stories that I expected this to be just brilliant.

Here's the setup.  This is the story of a really unpleasant couple, Aristide and Renee Saccard, during the French Second Empire.  Aristide is in his fifties and is a frenetic, scheming financial speculator who is making money hand over fist by buying Parisian properties and selling them to shell companies.  He has all kinds of shady government connections and gets these properties to be massively overvalued; then, he cheats the government out of millions of francs by selling the properties to the government, because they're going to be knocked down in a frenzy of urban renewal.  (The government is about to tear down tons of old buildings to put up new ones and create the current grid layout of Paris with the wide avenues, etc.)  Of course, he's also living on the edge because he's constantly on the verge of financial collapse.

Aristide's wife, Renee, is twenty years his junior, and after the untimely death of his first wife, he married her upon the advice of his shrewd sister.  Renee was a young woman of good family who is in a fix, so to speak, so her father marries her to nasty Aristide with a huge dowry to save the family's reputation.  Aristide takes her money to start his career as a financial speculator.  Ten years later, she's shallow and bored, and things take a turn for the dangerous when she decides to take a new lover -- her handsome stepson who's only seven or eight years her junior.

Basically, the story is a whirlwind of parties, greed, and incest, and if you've read anything by Zola, you know how things are going to turn out.   It was an interesting story, and like most of his other books, the characters aren't particularly sympathetic, and their behavior is pretty shocking.  Last year I read three novels by Zola in pretty quick succession (Germinal, #13 in the series; Pot-Bouille (Pot-Luck); #10, and La Bete Humaine, #17).  It was pretty obvious that The Kill is a much earlier work.  I really found the plots and character development much better in the later books, and although the satire and political commentary is present in all of them, I thought it was much more masterfully done in the later works.  Zola kind of beats you over the head with it in The Kill.

Also, there are frequently awful characters in all the books, but in the later novels, the stories are so well crafted that I couldn't stop reading them.  In The Kill I just found them to be wretched people living to excess and not nearly as well developed as the later books.  It's still an interesting book, but it just made me want to read more of the later stuff.  (By the way, #3, The Belly of Paris, was my first Zola, and I liked it, but I think the best bits were the food writing.  It was a good choice for a first Zola since I wasn't able to start with #1, The Fortunes of the Rougons; a new translations by Oxford World's Classics will be published in August.)

And now for the Manet connection.  As I mentioned, I finished this book on a flight to Washington -- it was the end of Spring Break so I got to spend a couple of days with family in Maryland.  Yesterday, we decide to visit the National Gallery, and as I was passing through the French Impressionist rooms, I stumbled upon a group with a docent who was discussing this picture by Edouard Manet:

It was painted by Manet during exactly the same period that Zola was writing about!  Apparently, it was controversial because it's a great big picture, about 6'x8', and it's not just a great painting, it's a social commentary.  At this time, the subjects of enormous artworks like this were always classical or Biblical.  These people are homeless and in the country, which would have been a shocking subject for that time period.  The girl on the left is probably an unwed mother, plus we have two street urchins, and the man on the right in the top hat is called the absinthe drinker because he's in another picture by Manet with that name, so we know he's probably an alcoholic.

Portrait of Emile Zola, 1868
Edouard Manet

Basically, all these people are homeless and in the country because of . . . . urban renewal during the Second Empire!!  So here is Manet painting a picture and making social commentary about the very same subject as Zola!  I mentioned Zola's book to the docent and she was familiar with it.  She also reminded me that Zola was friends with some of the Impressionists, including Manet, who painted Zola's portrait in 1868; and Cezanne, his childhood friend, who is the subject of Rougon-Macquart #14, The Masterpiece.   So there you have it, literature and art colliding.  My visit to the National Gallery was absolutely serendipitous and I think now The Masterpiece will be the next Zola on my to-read list.

La Bete Humaine by Emile Zola

It's actually been several weeks since I finished this book.  I had just been promoted to my new job, so I had a week of orientation, which I found exhausting, then I started my REAL new job, and had to go back to Spanish class. . . and I actually spend time with my family.  Needless to say, this book review kind of got lost in the shuffle.  Which is a shame, really, because it was a really engrossing book, and I feel like it deserves a review.

So,  La Bete Humaine is my fourth read in Emile Zola's twenty novel Rougon Macquart cycle.  Somehow, these novels all feature inter-related characters, but this isn't the sort of series which requires readers to begin at the beginning.  (Zola purists, please refrain from howling).  La Bete Humaine loosely translates to The Human Beast but is also sometimes translated as The Beast Within.  Basically, it's the story of murderers and what does or does not drive them to kill.   Are people born murders, or can good people be driven to it?  Are we really just animals?

There are several intertwining stories in this novel, which is set against the backdrop of the Paris-Le Havre train route, and its employees.  Monsieur Roubaud is a deputy station master, and he and his wife, Severine, live in company housing with several other railway employees.  A chance remark about Severine's godfather, the wealthy and influential Monsieur Grandmorin, raises Rouboud's suspicions, and he begins to suspect he was more than her patron after her parents' deaths.

Meanwhile, a railway engineer, Jacques Lantier, is harboring murderous thoughts of his own.  He is convinced that he can never have a healthy relationship with a woman, because all he can do is fantasize about killing them.  Jacques is the son of Gervaise, the main character in Zola's novel, L'Assommoir (The Drinking Den), and the brother of Etienne from Germinal, and of Claude Lantier, the main character of The Masterpiece. (However, it isn't necessary to have read these novels, as they all essentially stand alone).

Then there are some other characters who may or may not have killer instincts.  Jacques goes to visit his Aunt Phasie, who lives in a small house right next to the railway line near Le Havre.  She's chronically ill and believes that she is being slowly poisoned to death by her second husband, who is forever searching for her hidden cache of money.  Phasie has a daughter, Flore, who is in love with Jacques.  They're still mourning the death of her youngest daughter, who died under mysterious circumstances which may involve characters previously mentioned.

All of these people leave fairly miserable lives on and around the railway, which is so masterfully described, that, like the mines of Germinal, it becomes an important character in the book.  Jacques and his fellow railway men are constantly describing the engine by its name, "La Lison."

In the past, I've referred several times to literary characters as fascinating train wrecks.  It may be a terrible pun, but it couldn't be more apt in this case.  None of these characters are particularly likeable, but once again, Zola manages to intertwine their stories in such a fascinating manner that I couldn't wait to find out what happened next.  Their lives are pretty sordid, with affairs, theft, murder, and gossip, and Zola manages to get in some pretty nasty barbs about the corrupt judicial system.  I wouldn't really want to meet any of these people, but I could hardly put the book down once I got into it.  It must have been incredibly shocking when it was first published in 1890, and the ending is one of the most emotionally draining things I've read in a novel.  It's not particularly explicit for the twenty-first century reader, but I was still aghast at the ending.  I don't know if it's considered among the best of Zola's novels, but I don't think I can ever forget it.

Pot Luck (Pot Bouille) by Emile Zola

I know I just posted about Germinal a few weeks ago, but seriously, it was so great, I got on the Zola bandwagon and I'm totally obsessed with his work at the moment.  Pot Luck (also known as Pot-Bouille) is the satirical story of the bourgeios residents of a Paris apartment building, and a scathing attack on the hypocrisy of bourgeois attitudes of the time.  The story begins as Octave Mouret (from the Rougon family), who has just arrived in Paris from the provinces, comes to the apartment building on the Rue de Choiseul, where he'll be renting a room.  A friend of his family, Monsieur Campardon, lives in the building and has also lined up a job for Octave at The Ladies' Paradise, the eponymous department store of the next book in the series.  Octave meets his new neighbors through their parties and salons, and the reader is introduced to several families and their domestic staff.  

Basically, this story is about the apartment's residents and how awful they are.  The Josserand family has two daughters, and Madame Josserand is constantly scheming to get them married off, and to get her rich brother to give her money for dowries.  Madame Compardon is some kind of invalid -- she never gets dressed and just lays around reading Dickens, while her husband is carrying on affairs right under her nose.  Most of the men in the building are either hitting on the servants or off with their mistresses.  The wives are always screaming at the servants, the servants scream at each other and gossip about their employers, and the main character, Octave, is trying to seduce various women in the building.  Meanwhile, everyone pretends to be very respectable.  It's sort of like a sordid French version of Upstairs, Downstairs.

I did have a hard time with this book at first. Seriously, these characters are all pretty awful people, with minor exceptions.  At one point I was thinking about giving it up completely, but at about 100 pages, it got really interesting -- even though I didn't like any of the characters, I was fascinated.  They were so dreadful I had to find out what happened.  Unlike many 19th century writers, Zola's books are pretty fast reads, so I was easily able to finish the book in a couple of days once I really got into it.

I've read a lot of books about characters who are real train wrecks, like Madame Bovary.  None of the people in Pot Luck are quite as self-destructive as that, but this does turn out to be an interesting and sometimes hilarious story.  My one complaint about Zola is that he tends to throw a lot of characters at the reader in the beginning, which is pretty confusing.  I had put the book down for several days and when I picked it up again I was having trouble keeping them straight.  I did consider re-reading the beginning so I could make a chart or a plan of all the people that lived in the building and how they were all connected.  

Overall, this is a very entertaining story and I ended up loving it.  I couldn't help wondering if Zola based these characters on real people.  There was one passage near the end that cracked me up.  I'm pretty sure that this resident of the building, who's barely mentioned in the story, is based on Zola himself:  

Monsieur Gourd [the concierge] told how they had had a visit from the police -- yes, the police! The second-floor tenant had written such a filthy novel they were going to imprison him.  

"Horrible stuff!" he went on in a tone of disgust.  "It's full of filth about the most respectable people.  They even say our landlord's described in it -- yes, Monsieur Duveyrier himself! What a nerve, eh? It's good for them that they keep themselves to themselves; we know now what they get up to, in spite of their stand-offishness.  You see, they can afford to keep their carriage, because their filth is worth its weight in gold!"

So, now I'm all into Zola, and I've decided to read the entire Rougon-Macquart series, or as many as I can find in decent translations.  Next up:  The Ladies' Paradise.  Is anyone else a big Zola fan?  Which of his books are not to be missed?  

Therese Raquin by Emile Zola

This is the second half of a joint review with Amanda at The Zen Leaf.  For the first half of the review, click here.

Quick synopsis:  Thérèse Raquin has lived with her aunt and sickly cousin Camille since she was a small child and her father basically abandoned her.  Now a young woman, she and her cousin Camille have married and still live with his mother, Madame Raquin, in a dreary little alley in Paris where they have a small haberdashery.  Her life is dull but things suddenly get exciting when she falls for her husband's co-worker, Laurent.  They begin a torrid affair but things take a turn for the worse after Thérèse and Laurent decide they want to be together.

[In the first half of the review, Amanda and I had been discussing some of the themes in Thérèse Raquin.]

Amanda: Oh wow! I was going to point out that same theme - Be careful what you wish for. It was like their wish was their punishment. Fantastic! I’m glad you saw that too. For such a little book, this really had a lot in it, didn’t it? And on top of that, the book could be read strictly for plot. There’s so much ghost story creepy vibe to this book that it’s really just on the edge of pot-boiler. In fact, if it weren’t for all the literary themes, I’d say it was pot-boiler! I loved it, though. It was so fascinating to read. I read somewhere that Zola was doing a character study with it...but that seems to be typical of Zola. He loves character studies! Or just studies in general. I think that’s why I love him so much.

Karen: So, do you think it was a character study of Thérèse or Laurent, or both?  And I’m curious about the other Zola works that you read.  Would you classify those as character studies as well, and , if so, of just single characters or multiple characters?

I also think that Paris is a character in the book.  Zola does such an amazing job of describing the the bleak little alley in Paris where the Raquins lived and worked.  I know descriptions are you not your favorite thing, but Zola made the whole scene so vivid.  The Belly of Paris was set primarily in Les Halles, the famous food market, and he described it so well.  And by the way -- there are a couple of scenes in Thérèse Raquin which are also extremely vivid, but they are not delicious, to put it mildly.  You might not want to eat lunch while reading this book.  That’s all.

Amanda: Supposedly it was a character study of all three major characters. They were both supposed to represent different types of personalities, from what I read. Very interesting stuff.

I’m not sure the other books I read would be classified as character studies, but I do think the work he put into studying people paid off when it came to both books. He certainly went out of his way to make sure he know all his subject matter very well, from the descriptions of Paris to the life of a hired woman to the work of coal-miners. He was very thorough. And despite my normal dislike of description, I actually don’t mind it when it comes to Zola, because he weaves it in so artfully (rather than dumping it in page-long paragraphs that go on forever!). I never feel overburdened by description with him. Of course, much credit has to be given to the translators, which have done an excellent job on the books I’ve read. I love Leonard Tancock’s work, so I’ve grabbed up as many of his translations as possible. I wish he’d translated more! How have your translations been?

Karen:  They’ve been good -- I was surprised at how easy to read Zola is.  I guess I was expecting more long, flowery sentences like Dickens -- probably because it’s 19th century.  But Zola was a journalist first and his prose is really straightforward.  I read the Penguin Classics edition of Thérèse Raquin, which is translated by Robin Buss.  I thought it was excellent.  My edition of The Belly of Paris was translated by Mark Kurlansky, who also wrote some great non-fiction food.  I found it very easy to read, almost contemporary, but not in an intrusive manner -- I recently read a translation of Chekhov that was so contemporary, it was rather jarring.  

Anyway, I’m really happy to have discovered Zola, who has become one of my favorite classic authors.  I went out at bought another of his novels, The Drinking Den, and I’m planning on reading it soon.  I will definitely post my impressions as soon as I get to it!  Any more Zola on your to-read list?  

Amanda: Yep, a whole bunch. Next up will be La Bête Humaine, recommended by my friend Veronica, who says Zola is her fav author and that’s her fav Zola. I’d also love to get my hands on and read The Dream this year. It sounds so fantastic!

Thank you so much for doing this joint-review with me Karen! Any last words on Thérèse Raquin? My only thoughts are that if I’ve loved three different Zola novels like this, I’m hopeful that I’ll just keep loving them!

Karen:  You’re so welcome, I loved it!  We’ll have to do this again soon.  I’m definitely reading more Zola.  Besides The Drinking Den, I’m hoping to read The Kill and The Ladies’ Paradise, plus of course Germinal -- it would be great if we could discuss it in our book group.   And I’d love some suggestions as well -- readers, have you read Zola?  Which were your favorites?

To read Amanda's review of Germinal, click here.