Zoladdiction 2022: His Excellency Eugene Rougon

To his father he owed his massive, square shoulders and heavy features; from his mother, the fearsome Felicite Rougon, who ruled over Plassans, he had inherited his strength of will, a desire for supremacy that scorned petty concerns and petty pleasures. He was without question the greatest of the Rougons.

Not one but TWO epic fails this week: I did not finish my Zola novel in time for Fanda's April Zoladdiction reading event, and I did not finish my selection for Classics Spin #29. In fact, I didn't even start my Spin selection. For both fails, I blame Zola. Sorry, Zola, but this book dragged so badly that it's squarely tied on the bottom Nana, the only one of his novels that I truly disliked.

His Excellecy Eugene Rougon is the sixth novel in the Rougon-Maquart cycle, and it's fairly short at 333 pages so I thought I'd have no trouble reading it in a week. I've owned this book for a couple of years but had putting it off because it's a political novel, which is not my favorite genre. Sadly, I was correct to be hesitant because I could barely finish it.

Basically, it's the story of the fall and rise and fall and rise again of a politician, Eugene Rougon, who makes appearances in the first two books of the cycle, one of the original Rougons, the bourgeois, legitimate side of the family . The book begins when he has resigned his post in the ministry. As he's attempting to pack up or burn documents in his office, a parade of hangers-on traipse through his office. This is the circle of friends and frenemies and political allies who are most of the recurring characters in the story. Before he leaves office, many of them are still trying to get favors or score points. 

The rest of the novel is basically Rougon and the group scheming, gossiping and back-stabbing one another to achieve their own ends (or example, one character is desperately trying to get a train line re-routed so it's closer to his factory, which will then increase its value). Often Zola will begin a novel by throwing a lot of characters at the reader, and normally they sort themselves out and become distinctive to me, but I had a really hard time keeping all the characters straight in this one, because they were all sort of awful, and not even in an interesting way as in some of the other books in the series. 

Maybe this was the wrong time for this book. There are so many political scandals right now in real life I can hardly keep them straight, and reading about them in 19th century France is even harder since I don't really understand the context very well. After reading the introduction (which I always save for last because of spoilers), I realized that many of these characters are based on real people and there's a lot of satire involved which would have been obvious to contemporary leaders but was lost on me. I didn't particularly find Rougon to be a very well-developed character and I didn't much care for the other main character, a politically savvy schemer named Clorinde who is basically a female version of Rougon. At one point she suggests that they marry but Rougon points out that two such people in a marriage would be a disaster). 

He loved power for power's sake; free from any vain lust for wealth or honours. Crassly ignorant and utterly undistinguished in everything but the management of other men, it was only in his need to dominate others that achieved any kind of superiority. He loved the effort involved, and worshipped his own capability. . . . He believed only in himself; where others had arguments, Rougon had convictions; he subordinated everything to ceaseless self-aggrandizement.

My other issue with the book was that great sections of it are Zola telling the reader what characters do or have done instead of actually describing or showing it. The parts when there are actual activities and dialogue are much more interesting than the narrator passively explaining it. Towards the end of the book there's a chapter when people are actually doing something and it was the best part of the book, but I had to get through eleven or twelve chapters to actually get there, which was a real slog. And there's SO MUCH gossip! So much scheming, it's kind of exhausting. I guess that's politics though, so maybe this just was not the book for me, or maybe it's just not the right time. But this book is definitely at the bottom of the Zola ranking for me. There are only four more books in the series left that I haven't read and I certainly hope those are better, I'd hate to finish reading Zola with a whimper instead of a bang.

I'm counting this as my Classic in Translation for the Back to the Classics Challenge; and as my French selection for the European Reading Challenge. 

 

#Zoladdiction 2020: The Sin of Abbe Mouret

It's April, and that means it's another edition of Fanda's Zoladdiction! Hosted by Fandaclassiclit, this is a month-long celebration of the life and work of Emile Zola, my favorite French writer. I've been reading Zola's novels for ten years, and I'm more than halfway through with his Rougon-Macquart cycle of twenty novels. This year I selected The Sin of Abbe Mouret, first published in 1875.

This is the fifth book in the series, and at just under 300 pages, it's also one of the shortest -- which is honestly why I chose it from the five Zola novels on my TBR list. I'm still recovering from Les Miserables and just could not face the 600 pages of La Debacle, another war novel. As such a short novel, there are few characters and the plot line is fairly simple. Abbe Serge Mouret, age 25, is the priest of a small parish of Les Artaud, a village in southern France, where he lives with his younger sister, Desiree, and an elderly housekeeper, La Teuse. Serge and Desiree are the two younger children of the Mouret family introduced in The Conquest of Plassans, the previous volume of the series (their older brother Octave moves off to Paris and reappears in books ten and eleven, Pot-Bouille and The Ladies' Paradise).

One spring day Abbe Mouret is out on an errand -- he must persuade a pregnant village girl to marry the baby's father. The girl's father is unwilling to give up unpaid labor, and most of the villagers seem nonplussed about the situation. On his way back to the parish, he runs into his uncle, Doctor Pascal (last seen in the first volume, The Fortunes of the Rougons.) The Doctor is on his way to check on a patient, Jeanbernat, the elderly caretaker of a vast abandoned estate known as Le Paradou (the Paradise). Jeanbernat lives in this isolated, ramshackle ruin with his niece Albine, who has become rather wild. 

It turns out Jeanbernat is just fine and not on death's door. but Abbe Mouret catches a glimpse of this idyllic garden paradise and the wild Albine. A few weeks later, Abbe Mouret falls ill from a terrible fever, and is sent to convalesce in the secluded estate. When he is recovering, he has no memory of his life as a priest, and soon he falls in love with Albine and with the gardens of Le Paradou -- basically, it's a 19th century Adam and Eve story, except that Adam is a priest. When Mouret remembers his life as priest, he wrestles with his conscience -- can he overcome his sin and return to his spritual ways as a priest? Or will he succumb to his earthly desires and run away with Albine? Zola isn't known for happy endings, so the outlook is not favorable.

Overall I liked this book, though it isn't my favorite in the series. Obviously, there's a lot of religion in this book, and the struggle between man's spirituality and man's human desires. Sex and religion are hot topics at any time, and the combination of the two is just somewhere I'm going to avoid. 

I will say that there are a lot of wonderful descriptions of the gardens of the Paradou, though if you are a gardener, you will realize that miraculously, many of these plants don't normally bloom at the same time, so suspend your disbelief. Or maybe it's a magical microclimate? It is meant to be an Eden, so I'll let it pass. 

Forest Interior by Paul Cezanne, 1898-1899. Fine Arts Museums, San Francisco. The cover image above is a detail from this painting. Ironically, Cezanne and Zola were close friends until Zola used him as inspiration for his novel The Masterpiece. They never spoke again after that.

Mostly what I didn't like about this book was the way women were depicted, and the misogyny of one character in particular. There is another priest, Brother Archangias (an archangel?) who has such an overwhelming hatred of women he literally says they should all be strangled at birth. To him, all women are temptresses and sluts -- the only women he seems to tolerate is the housekeeper La Teuse -- and there are several scenes in which they are playing the card game War. Zola is pretty heavy-handed with the symbolism in this book, if you hadn't noticed already. I can't decide if Zola really feels this way about women or if he's satirizing the sexism of the church. 

The only female character that Zola depicts favorably is Serge's sister Desiree, but she's supposed to be simple-minded -- not stupid, but I wonder if she would now be classified as on the autism spectrum. She loves nothing more than her animals and treats them like her own children, though she doesn't seem to mind pigs being slaughtered. I'm not quite sure what to make of her. 

Desiree and the uncle, Doctor Pascal, are basically the only good characters in the novel. As in The Conquest of Plassans, Zola uses Doctor Pascal to give us his naturalist theories about the family: 

You, of course, you're a priest, you've done the right thing, it's a very happy state being a priest. It's completely taken you over, hasn't it, so you've really turned towards the good. You'd never have been happy doing anything else. Your relatives, who started out like you, have committed their villainies without finding any consequent satisfaction. . . . There's a logic to it, my boy. A priest completes the family. It was inevitable anyway. Our blood was bound to go that way in the end. . . . So much the better for you, you've been the luckiest. (p. 33)

Doctor Pascal is the subject of the final novel in the series, and I've just recently discovered that a new translation is scheduled to be published by Oxford World's Classics this fall. Of course it could delayed by current events, but I'm hopeful. Finally, the series will be complete in new translations! 

I'm counting this as my Classic with a Proper Name for the Back to the Classics Challenge and also for the Victorian Challenge. 

The Fortune of the Rougons: The Rougon-Macquart Origin Story

"A new dynasty is never founded without a struggle. Blood makes good manure. It will be a good thing for the Rougon family to be founded on a massacre, like many illustrious families." 

I had six unread Zola novels on my TBR shelves when Fanda announced her annual Zoladdiction readalong, and although I've been reading Zola for close to a decade, I still hadn't read the very first volume, The Fortune of the Rougons. 

Published in 1871 but set twenty years earlier, The Fortunes of the Rougons sets up the story of the three branches of the Rougon-Macquart family. The story begins on a cold December day in 1851, and a pair of teenage sweethearts meet in an abandoned lumber yard in the fictional town of Plassans (loosely modeled on the Provencal town of Aix). Silviere, aged 17, tells 13-year-old Miette that he is planning to join an uprising of Republicans who are resisting a coup d'etat by Napoleon III.

The book then jumps backward in time to describe the origins of the family: a young heiress, Adelaide Fouquet, inherited land from her insane father some years before, then shocked the town by marrying a peasant gardener, Rougon. A year later, she gave birth to a son, Pierre, but Rougon died soon after. The town was further scandalized when the young widow began an affair with a smuggler named Macquart, and though they never married, she bore two more children, Ursula and Antoine. So essentially the family is split along the three children: Pierre is the first of the bourgeois Rougons; the middle-class Mourets are Ursula's children by her marriage to a hatter; and the working-class Macquarts are the descendents of Antoine.

The eldest son, Pierre, manages to marry the daughter of an olive oil merchant, and when most of the action of the story takes place in 1851, he and his ambitious wife Felicite are trying to manipulate their way into the upper part of society and local politics. Felicite has a sort of salon in apartment, and her youngest son Pascal, a doctor, seems to stand in for Zola himself as he studies their Plassans cronies:

Pascal, to appease her, came and spent a few evenings in the yellow drawing room. He was much less bored than he feared. . . . [they] seemed like so many strange animals, which hitherto he had had no opportunity to study. He looked, with the fascination of a naturalist, at their grimacing faces, in which he discerned traces of their occupations and appetites. . . . At the time, he was greatly preoccupied with comparative natural history, applying to the human race the observations he had made on animals with regard to the workings of heredity. In the yellow drawing room, therefore, he was amused at the thought that he had accidentally wandered into a menagerie. He noted the similarities between the grotesque creatures he saw and certain animals he knew. The Marquis, with his leanness and sly look, reminded him very much of a long green grasshopper. Vuillet struck him as a pale, slimy toad. He was more indulgent towards Roudier and the Commander, a fat sheep and a toothless old mastiff. The fantastic Granoux, however, was a particular source of fascination. He spent a whole evening studying his facial angle. Whenever he heard him mutter some vague insult about bloodthirsty republicans, he expected him to moan like a calf; and he could never watch him rise from a chair without imagining that he was about to leave the room on all fours. (pp 88-89)

Pierre uses the political crisis after Napoleon's coup and the subsequent uprising to try and gain power in Plassans. Meanwhile, his illegitimate brother Antoine is trying to win back his portion of an inheritance he believes he is owed by Pierre. When we get back to young Silviere, it turns out he is a Mouret, the nephew of Antoine, who strongly influences his political beliefs. Poor Silviere gets tragically caught up in the resistance and with him young Miette; naturally, things don't end well.

I enjoyed this book, but I definitely enjoyed the sections of the family history and of the Macquarts better than the political and social machinations of the Rougons. Of the volumes I've read so far, I mostly prefer the stories based on the Macquarts. I'm not sure if it's because the Rougon stories tend to have more politics, which isn't my favorite subject, or because I think that the Macquart characters are just more vivid and interesting -- they're all a bunch of fascinating train wrecks.

Emile Zola

I normally don't read book series out of order, but back when I first started, many of the twenty volumes in the series didn't have recent English translations, and the original translations from the French done in Victorian times had significant cuts. Overall, twenty novels are generally chronological, but each book really stands on its own, and some of them are only very loosely connected. I'd read twelve of the series in no particular order when I finally read the first volume, and the other books in started to fit together in my mind like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. (I was very grateful for the excellent family tree included in the book, though it does include dates of birth and death which are sort of spoiler.) I also found this great website, simply titled Rougon-Macquart Novels, with lots of background and information about the Rougon-Macquart series. It's great if you're having trouble keeping characters straight, how all the novels connect, or for me, the basic plots of the books I finished several years ago.

I've now completed thirteen of the twenty novels in the cycle, and look forward to completing the rest There's only one left in the series without a recent translation: the final novel, Doctor Pascal. But Oxford University Press has published new editions of almost every single Zola novel in the past ten or so years, so I'm confident a good translation is on the horizon.

I'm counting this as my Classic in Translation for the Back to the Classics Challenge, and for my book set in France for the European Reading Challenge.

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.

The Masterpiece by Emile Zola

In honor of Zola's birthday, I was happy to sign up for a Zola reading event hoted by Delaisse and Fanda.  I had six novels by Zola on the TBR shelves, and I settled on The Masterpiece because I'm fascinated by Impressionist painters.  (And because it's fairly short, less than 400 pages.)  Though it's not my favorite Zola so far, it was definitely interesting, though tragic. The Masterpiece is the fourteenth book in Zola's Rougon-Macquart cycle, and it's the story of Claude Lantier, an Impressionist artist living in Paris and his obsession with creating a masterpiece.  Claude's obsession becomes his downfall.  The character of Claude is based on the Impressionist Paul Cezanne, Zola's childhood friend.



Not actually a painting by Cezanne -- this cover is a detail of a portrait of the artist Bazille, by Auguste Renoir. 

 The story begins in Paris in the 1870s, on a stormy night.  Claude Lantier, an artist, returns to his studio/apartment and discovers a young woman waiting in the vestibule.  She claims to have been abandoned at the station after her train was delayed.  Claude is mildly suspicious but insists she come upstairs and stay the night.  Though she's nervous, it's all very chaste -- Claude sleeps on the sofa and gives her the bed. 

In the morning, he peeks at the sleeping woman, Christine, and is so inspired by her beauty that he begins to sketch her.  After she awakes, she flees the apartment, but returns weeks later to thank him.  They begin a friendship that eventually blossoms into something more.

Meanwhile, Claude is hard at work on his paintings, and he and his artist colleagues are desperately trying to get their work accepted at the official Paris Salon.  Claude and his friends are "Open Air" artists, also known as Impressionists, so their work is too radical and daring.  Claude's major work at this time is based on Edouard Manet's most famous work, Le dejuener sur l'herbe:

This being a Zola novel, Claude is another train wreck (he's the son of Gervaise Lantier of L'Assommoir and brother of Jacques Lantier of La Bete Humaine, so he's from an entire family of train wrecks!  Nobody writes fascinating train wrecks like Zola).  Christine becomes Claude's lover, and things go pretty well for awhile, but eventually Claude becomes obsessed with creating a masterwork, and his life turns into a downward spiral; naturally, tragedy ensues.  Along the way Zola takes some serious jabs at the artistic temperament and obsession, and about the politics of the Paris art scene.  (Zola himself is represented by Claude's childhood friend Pierre Sandoz, a writer.)

This is Zola's most autobiographical work, and even though the book is ostensibly about artists, I couldn't help wondering if any of Zola's own experiences as a writer were expressed as Claude's obsession, with a lot of insight as to the constant stress of artists and their overwhelming need to create better and better works.  Here, Claude's friend Bongrand, a fellow artists, tells Claude how hard it is even after an artist is successful:

That's when the torture begins; you've drunk your excitement to the dregs and found it all too short and even rather bitter, and you wonder whether it was really worth the struggle.  From that point there is no more unknown to explore, no new sensations to experience. Pride has had its brief moment of celebrity; you know that your best has been given and you're surprised it hasn't brought a keener sense of satisfaction.  From that moment the horizon starts to empty of all the hopes that once attracted you towards it.  There's nothing to look forward to but death. 

After The Masterpiece was published, Cezanne never forgave Zola and refused to speak to him ever again, so it must have hit pretty close to home.  I liked this book, though not as much as some of the other Rougon-Macquart novels I've read.  I found the plot to be a little on the slow side.  Zola's characters tend to be fairly awful people, but the stories themselves are so compelling I can hardly put them down -- I zoomed through Germinal and La Bete Humaine in a just a couple of days each.  This one took longer.  I did like some of the characters, especially Sandoz, and the story was interesting, but somehow it didn't hook me the same as some of his other novels.   However, I'm still going to keep going with Zola.  Eventually, I hope to read the entire series, though I doubt I'll ever read them in order.  And some of them are still only available in the Vizetelly translations which are terribly bowdlerized.  I'm toying with the idea of taking up French so that I can read them in the original, though that's probably a drastic solution.

Has anyone else read The Masterpiece?  What did you think?  Any other favorites by Zola?  I'd like to read another before the end of April, and I'm thinking of The Ladies' Paradise.  Thoughts?

April Zola Reading Event

Fanda from Fanda Classic Lit and  O from Delaisse are hosting a Zola reading event!!  In honor of Zola's birthday, which is April 2, they are hosting Zoladdiction, which is basically a month of reading Zola.  Well, I love Zola, and I have several volumes waiting patiently on the TBR shelves -- how could I refuse?

You can find details here, but essentially, participants will read Zola's works and blog about them during the month of April.  There are three levels of participation, named in honor of three of his most famous heroines:

First level:  Maheude -- read one book 

Second level:  Gervaise -- read two or three books

Third level:  Nana -- read four or more books

As much as I'd love to read all Zola, all the time, I'm going to be realistic and commit to the second level, Gervaise -- I'm sure I can read two books by Zola in one month!

Currently, I have six unread works by Zola in my possession, so I'm going to try and read at least two of them:

The Ladies' Paradise -- sex and shopping!  The story of a department store, with some of the characters from Pot Bouille. 

The Debacle -- Zola's only historical novel, set during the Franco-Prussian War.  Said to be one of the most accurate depictions of war in literature. 

The Dream -- the story of a young orphan living in a world of dreams.  It sounds very different from the harsh realism of most Zola novels.

I won't actually be reading this in French.
But I really like this cover!

The Earth -- a rural novel, set in Provence.  I've heard it has parallels with King Lear.

Nana -- one of Zola's most famous works, the story of a high-class courtesan in Paris.  Nana is the daughter of Gervaise, the washerwoman in L'Assommoir.

The Masterpiece -- Zola's most autobiographical novel, about a tortured artist.  Supposedly Zola's childhood friend Paul Cezanne never spoke to Zola after the novel was published.

Well -- is anyone else signing up for Zoladdiction?  Which novels should I read?  What's your favorite Zola novel?

Zola Giveaway Winner

And the winner of my Zola Giveaway is. . . . .

Jane GS from 

Reading, Writing, Working, Playing!!!  

Congratulations to Jane, who selected Germinal as the Zola novel she would most like to win.   I'm very happy because that's one of my favorite novels of all time.

Thanks to everyone who entered the giveaway.  My blogoversary is coming up in September, and I'll be giving another book away then.  Happy reading to all!

A Zola Giveaway!

Happy Bastille Day!  Joyeux Le Quatorze Juillet!  Today, I'm honoring both France and my favorite French author, Emile Zola.  (And of course, the Paris in July blogging event).  Zola is one of the classic authors I discovered while blogging, and he's become one of my favorite writers.  In fact, I'm so in love with Zola's work, I've decided to share the love and give away a paperback edition of one of his novels.

One winner will receive his or her choice of a Zola novel listed below.  All you have to do to enter the giveaway is leave a comment below telling me which Zola novel you'd like to receive, and why.  Make sure you leave a contact email if your comment doesn't link automatically to your blog.

Here's a list of novels of Zola readily available in good, current paperback translations from the Book Depository.  At the moment, I've included all the Oxford World's Classics and Penguin translations, which I know are good.  (If I've missed any, please tell me so in the comments).  I've included links to the Zola novels I've reviewed so far on this blog.

• Therese Raquin:  One of Zola's earliest novels and his big break, the book that first made him famous. 
• The Fortunes of the Rougons (*Available August 9, 2012 from Oxford World's Classics):  The first in his famous Rougon-Macquart series of novels.
• The Kill : Second in the Rougon-Maquart series, about a couple made rich by frantic real estate speculation in Paris.  
• The Belly of Paris: Third in the series, this one is set in the famous Les Halles food markets.  Lots of great food descriptions! 
• L'Assommoir (The Drinking Den): The story of a working-class laundress and her downward spiral into poverty and alcoholism. 
• Nana: One of Zola's most famous works, the story of a prostitute who rises from humble beginnings to become a high-class "cocotte."
• Pot-Bouille (Pot Luck): An acerbic satire about the bourgeoise, hypocritical residents of a Paris apartment building.  
•  The Ladies' Paradise:  The original sex-and-shopping novel, about the rise of a department store and consumerism in late 19th century Paris.  
• Germinal: Probably Zola's most famous work, the story of a coal-miner's strike in northwestern France.  Considered by many to be his masterpiece, and one of my favorite novels of all time.
• The Masterpiece:  Inspired by Zola's childhood friend, the Impressionist Paul Cezanne, this is the story of a talented young artist who comes to Paris from the provinces.  It's the most autobiographical of Zola's works and gives insight into his life as a writer and into the lives of the Impressionists. 
• The Earth:  Similar to King Lear, this is the story of a a family's divisive struggle after the patriarch divides his land between three children, portraying the destructiveness of greed and ignorance. 
• La Bete Humaine (The Beast Within):  One of Zola's most violent and explicit works, this novel is set against a backdrop of railways and examines what drives people to murder.  
• The Debacle:   Set during the Franco-Prussian war, this was the best-selling of Zola's novels during his lifetime.  It's well regarded for its historical detail and epic sweep. 

The drawing will be open until Thursday, July 18, at 5 p.m. U. S. Central Standard Time.  The contest is open to residents of any country to which The Book Depository ships.  (If you're not sure if your country is included, click here).  I'll post the winner on my blog and contact him or her via email; the winner will have three days to reply or I'll choose another winner.  

*If the winner selects The Fortunes of the Rougons, it won't ship out until August, as this the publication date of the new paperback translation.

Good luck and happy 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?