The Doctor's Wife by Mary Elizabeth Braddon: A Victorian Trainwreck

Victorian sensation is my kind of escapist fiction -- normally chock-full of over-the-top swooning, scandal, mistaken identities, dubious women, and rascally men. The Doctor's Wife by Mary Elizabeth Braddon is oddly lacking in the most dramatic elements -- and yet it is one of my favorites of the genre so far.

Published in 1864, the story begins with the short history of George Gilbert, a young surgeon, son of one of two local doctors in Graybridge-on-the-Wayverne, a fictional town in the fictional county of Midlandshire. He is expected to take over for his elderly father someday, and though a local brewer's daughter has been making eyes at him, he's not interested. While visiting an old school friend on a whirlwind week in London, he meets Isabel Sleaford, daughter of his mate's landlady, and his life is forever changed. 

Isabel is seventeen, dreamy and romantic, and lives for the novels and poetry that fill up her time when she isn't helping her stepmother take care of her multiple half-siblings, their boarders, and her unscrupulous father. George is instantly smitten with lovely Isabel, unlike any girl he'd ever met. I instantly adored young Smith, who was christened Sam but has changed his name to the more literary Sigismund. Clearly, he's a stand-in for Braddon herself, and the novel is full of delightful references to the writer's process.

Perhaps there never was a wider difference between two people than that which existed between Isabel Sleaford and her mother's boarder. Sigsimund wrote romantic fictions by wholesale, and yet was as unromantic as the prosiest butcher that ever entered a cattle-market. He sold his imagination, and Isabel lived upon hers. To him romance was something which must be woven into the form most likely to suit the popular demand. He slapped his heroes into marketable shape, as coolly as a butterman slaps a pat of butter into the semblance of a swan or a crown, in accordance with the requirements of his customers. But poor Isabel's heroes were impalpable tyrants, and ruled her life. She wanted to be like her books; she wanted to be a heroine -- unhappy, perhaps, and dying early.

Great cover on this yellowback edition.

But the acquaintance is cut short when the Sleaford family literally disappear in the middle of the night to escape creditors -- George and his friend Smith, a budding novelist, are lucky to escape without losing their own luggage. George is disappointed to cut the acquaintance with Isabel short, and a year later, he's thrilled to get a letter from Smith saying Isabel is now settled nearby, working as a governess for a distant relative. George wastes no time meeting with her and pops the question ASAP.

Sadly, though, Isabel realizes on her honeymoon that she's made a mistake -- George is far to pragmatic and thrifty for a dreamy, romantic girl. She is quickly bored to death in the country with little to do and doesn't get on well in local society, who are scandalized that George didn't marry a local girl.

He had married this girl because she was unlike other women; and now that she was his own property, he set himself conscientiously to work to smooth her into the most ordinary semblance of every-day womanhood, by means of that moral flat-iron called common sense.

A few months later Isabel is thrilled to meet a real Byronic hero -- the dark and handsome Roland Lansdell, heir to Mordred Priory, recently returned to the neighborhood from the Continent. He is everything that Isabel has ever dreamed of -- dark, handsome, moody, and a poet! He's handsome, bored, and rich, she's beautiful, bored and married -- what could possibly go wrong? 

Naturally, what follows is a trainwreck for everyone -- a bit like an English Madame Bovary, but if Emma Bovary were more sympathetic. I knew it wouldn't end well, but what was interesting for me was how Braddon got to the end of the story -- there were some twists and turns that I wasn't expecting and took me completely by surprise. There were less of the inevitable dramatic tropes one normally finds in Victorian sensation novels, and I've since learned that Braddon was determined to write a more literary novel. 

I really enjoyed The Doctor's Wife and I'd rank it as one of Braddon's best -- different than Lady Audley's Secret, but good in its own way. It was a bit closer to early Thomas Hardy than Wilkie Collins. I was really sympathetic to all the main characters and found some of the side characters really endearing, especially Smith who gives the reader such wonderful insights into the mind of the writer: 

Portrait of M. E. Braddon by William Powell Frith, 1865

And if I were a young lady," continued Mr. Smith, speaking with some slight hesitation, and glancing furtively at Isabel's face,—"if I were a young lady, and had a kind of romantic fancy for a person I ought not to care about, I'll tell you what I'd do with him,—I'd put him into a novel, Izzie, and work him out in three volumes; and if I wasn't heartily sick of him by the time I got to the last chapter, nothing on earth would cure me."

I'm counting this as my 19th Century Classic for the Back to the Classics Challenge; also counts for the Victorian Reading Challenge.

Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann: A Family of German Trainwrecks

Having spent nearly three years in Germany, I thought it was time I really buckled down and tried to read some actual German literary classics. Published in 1901, Buddenbrooks is one of Thomas Mann's masterpieces and is inspired by the history of his own family.

The story begins in 1835, in a northern German city modeled after Mann's hometown of Lubeck. The Buddenbrook family is hosting a dinner party shortly after moving into their latest home, a large historic home sold by another merchant family whose fortunes have declined. We are introduced to the Buddenbrooks: Johann, a successful grain wholesaler (also known by his title, Consul), the older son of his father's second marriage. He and his wife Elisabeth have three children, Thomas, Christian, and Antonie, known as Tony. A second daughter will soon join the family, and there is a young ward, Klothilde, the child of a poor relation. Buddenbrooks traces the family over about 40 years, focusing on the three older children, tracing their successes and more often their failures throughout the 19th century.

It's quite a long book, divided into eleven parts (more than 700 pages in my edition). The first hundred pages or so were a bit slow, mostly just setting up the characters -- the entire first part is just the dinner party (told in great detail, including descriptions of the food). The three principals are fairly young and their story is mostly just about their education and misadventures. Things started to pick up for me in Part III when young Tony attracts an unwanted suitor called Herr Grunlich, a commercial agent from Hamburg. Tony only eighteen, but the family seems unfazed when this 32-year-old man starts hanging around their house. He doesn't seem discouraged even when Tony is openly rude to him, and to her dismay, offers her a proposal of marriage. Naturally, the family assumes Tony is too young to "know her own mind" and pressure her to accept, which made me want to throw something across the room.

What eventually follows is the first in a series of Bad Decisions by this family. It seems like they're doing the right thing at the time, but basically, all three of the elder children are on a slow, downward spiral, repeating mistakes over and over, both financially and in their personal lives. Essentially, they are a bunch of slow-moving trainwrecks. The plot of the storyline shifts back and forth, mainly concerned with Tony and her oldest brother Thomas, who has been groomed to take over the family business. (Younger brother Christian is a charming ne'er-do-well who makes occasional appearances to drag the family down even farther.)

I wouldn't have thought the story of a German merchant family would be so fascinating, but it absolutely was. After those first 100 pages I was completely hooked and could not stop reading it, and finished most of it in about three days. It's very much a long Victorian saga, as it's set up in multiple sections with mostly very short chapters. It absolutely felt as though it could have been serialized, though I believe it was published in a single volume. It also reminded me a bit of The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy.

I particularly enjoyed Mann's descriptions, especially of domestic life. Mann goes into surprising detail about the homes, decor, and fashions of the time, and there are a lot of descriptions of meals in this book. Here's a quote regarding a Sunday dinner attended by the suitor Herr Grunlich:

He ate mussel ragout, julienne soup, baked sole, roast veal with mashed potatoes and Brussels sprouts, maraschino pudding, and pumpernickel with Roquefort cheese -- and at each course he offered a new tribute appropriate to the delicacy. For example, raising his dessert spoon, he gazed at a statue woven into the wallpaper and said aloud to himself, "God forgive me, I can do no other; I've eaten a large serving, but this pudding is just too splendid. I simply must implore my hostess for a second helping. 

I suppose this is Mann's way of showing how bourgeois the family is, but I love food writing so that's one reason why I was hooked -- it's making me hungry just thinking about it. I did get really invested in the characters and would stop reading and yell at them when they made bad decisions. It will definitely be one of my top reads this year and now I can't wait to read Mann's other long saga, The Magic Mountain. Also, if you're looking for a copy, I highly recommend the 1993 edition translated by John E. Woods. I actually own a Vintage International copy that was translated back in 1924, but I didn't like it as much as the e-book version so ended up not reading my print copy at all.

I've also discovered that Buddenbrooks was adapted into a TV miniseries in 1979. Used copies are available on Amazon but they're really expensive, so hopefully I can get it from a library. It's available from Amazon.de for a mere 20 euros but I'm pretty sure that version doesn't have English subtitles.

I'm counting this as my Very Long Classic for the Back to the Classics Challenge.

Gone With the Wind: Problematic, But Still Wonderful

The lovely 75th Anniversary edition.

Possibly the ultimate in Big Fat American Novels, I first read Gone With the Wind as a youngster, in the sixth grade; I'd seen the movie when it first aired on network TV in the 1970s, which was a huge television event. I've since read it at least a dozen times but it has been at least 20 years since my previous re-read. I did get a lovely hardcover edition as a holiday gift a few years ago but never got around to re-reading it until recently, inspired by  by the GWTW Readalong hosted by The Book Corps and by another recent read, Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With the Wind Letters," which I finished for the TBR Pile Challenge. 

As nearly everyone knows, GWTW was published in 1936 and was a runaway best-seller, and was adapted into the most successful movie of all time. The novel is more than 1000 pages long, but basically, GWTW chronicles the story of fiery Georgia debutante Scarlett O'Hara during the American Civil War and Reconstruction, and her undying love for the dreamy blond and bookish Ashley Wilkes. To Scarlett's chagrin Ashley marries his cousin, the sweet, saintly Melanie Hamilton, so in a fit of pique, Scarlett marries Melanie's brother, the shy Charles. Scarlett and Melanie are thus tied together during and after the War, and Scarlett must use her wits and bravery for them to survive, along with the O'Hara family's plantation, Tara. Scarlett also has a love-hate relationship with the dashing profiteer and scoundrel Rhett Butler, in what is one of American literature's greatest tragic love stories. 

It's always really hard for me to re-visit a favorite book from my childhood -- what if it doesn't stand up the test of time? Some books are just as good or even better (like To Kill a Mockingbird) and some are truly disappointing. For me, GWTW was a really mixed re-read. As always, I find the characters indelible and the story of spunky Scarlett so compelling -- she truly is a feminist icon. However, reading it decades later, I was constantly aware of the more problematic aspects of the book. Mitchell depicts the African-American characters as mostly lovable but childlike and easily manipulated by those terrible Yankees (with the exception of Mammy); also, it definitely perpetuates the romanticized, racist version of The Good Old South in which white people know best and all the African-Americans are happy and well-cared for, glossing over the fact that all the rich white folks are living off wealth accumulated by the suffering of generations of slaves. 

The same mass-market paperback edition as I read in 6th grade. 

Mine is equally tattered, I'm sure it's still packed away somewhere in storage. 

There's also lot of usage of the n-word and variations which made me really uncomfortable. Ashley Wilkes is the only character who seems to think Emancipation is a good idea and he's depicted as a dreamy and unrealistic. Scarlett is a feminist and I'm always rooting for her survival, but she is NOT a nice character -- she's really selfish and self-centered, and often cruel. Also, sometimes Mitchell's prose is a little flowery, and there are passages in which she digresses with battle scenes and background of Reconstruction history that definitely romanticize the white Southerners as victims. Um, no. 

However, it's a fascinating story with a great plot and great characters, and I found myself really enjoying the re-read, despite all my issues with the book. (Scarlett is definitely what I would call a fascinating train wreck). I still wish I knew what happened to Scarlett and Rhett Butler. Sadly, Mitchell never wrote a sequel nor left any hints about their fate before her untimely death in 1949.  It is a great, sprawling historical epic and I do still love it, despite its flaws.

 I'm counting it as my 20th Century Classic for the Back to the Classics Challenge. 

The Bolter by Frances Osborne: A Real-Life Fascinating Train Wreck

I first heard the nickname "The Bolter" back when I read Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford, which I loved. In that story, the narrator, cousin to a family of eccentric sisters loosely based on the Mitfords, has been abandoned by her mother, who has "bolted" to live with her lover, or new husband, or something like that.  Anyway, Mitford was inspired by an actual bolter -- the infamous Idina Sackville, a socialite who left her husband and two small sons to live in Kenya with the scandalous Happy Valley set: rich white settlers who drank, did drugs, and took multiple lovers between the wars. Idina married and divorced five times and was possibly the most famous of them all. 

Married at just twenty, Idina left her first husband to marry another man and start over in Kenya because of her husband's infidelities. Apparently it was extremely common for the British aristocrats (both men and women -- as long as the women had produced "an heir and a spare") to take multiple lovers, as long nobody talked about it publicly or had the poor taste to file for divorce, thus making it common knowledge. But when Idina's husband fell in love with her younger sister's best friend, she decided she would rather leave her sons (who could never be raised by another man) and start over in a new country. However, the wild behavior of the upper crust was even worse in the colonies. One of her ex-husbands was almost killed by his new lover in an unsuccessful murder/suicide, and her third ex-husband was eventually shot and killed by the jealous husband of his then lover. 

Dina with her third husband, Josslyn Hay, Lord Errol.
He was later shot and killed by his lover's husband.

All this made the news and was naturally terribly scandalous, both in Kenya and back in Britain. After she left her first husband, Idina wasn't allowed to contact her two young sons and didn't see either of them until they were in college. She had a daughter by her third husband, who was sent back to England to live with family there, and eventually became estranged because Idina's behavior and multiple marriages were just too scandalous. She did have stepchildren by her fourth husband that she loved very much, but eventually that husband also left her to marry another woman, taking those  children with him to South Africa. 

Idina's life was really tragic and quite fascinating, in a trainwreck sort of way. I had a hard time with her leaving her small children behind, but then of course I can't imagine what it would be like to have my husband having an affair with my sister's best friend either. (I guess I'm just not cut out for that crazy lifestyle.) She had to have known that eventually her bad behavior would eventually cut her off from her family, but she kept on doing it. 

Portrait of Idina by Sir William Orpen.

The Bolter was written by Frances Osborne, Idina's great-granddaughter by one of the sons of her first marriage. I can definitely imagine that having such an infamous ancestor would inspire you to write a book. I did enjoy this book though I have a few quibbles -- mainly that the author seemed to take a few liberties with the narrative of the story. Osborne writes about what Idina is thinking and feeling, or describes exactly what she does, without source material. But it's a pretty riveting story, though I did want to jump back in time and yell at her. I was also imagining Lady Mary from Downton Abbey though Idina was way more scandalous -- why hasn't this been turned into a miniseries? 

This is my first book completed for the TBR Pile Challenge 2019.

Jude the Obscure: Possibly the Most Depressing Book Ever

I hadn't planned on reading a third Hardy novel this year (I read Under the Greenwood Tree and A Pair of Blue Eyes practically back-to-back) but recently comedian Michael Ian Black started a podcast called Obscure in which he reads one chapter of Hardy aloud per week, interspersed with his comments. He goes off on tangents and does terrible accents for some of the characters, and I find it delightful. However, if I read along with Michael, it would take nearly a year to finish Jude, so I've read ahead. And let me tell you, Hardy deserves the reputation of my first impressions. Jude has four main characters who are all miserable, and terrible things happen to them. It is possibly one of the most depressing books I have ever read.

Here's the setup: schoolteacher Mr. Phillotson is packing up and leaving a small village in Wessex to continue studying at Christminster, a large university town (based on Oxford). Young Jude Fawley, a bright but poor pupil, is sad to see him go and vows to someday go to Christminster himself to study. As a poor boy with no resources, and being of a lower class, this is practically impossible. He lives with his great aunt who is full of dire predictions about the Fawleys, and how they should never marry, that they are essentially cursed.

Nevertheless, Jude works hard, gets hold of some Greek and Latin grammar books, and does his best to study on his own. As he grows up, he begins training as a stonemason, while still improving himself by studying late into the night. Then his plans are sidetracked one day when he is literally hit in the face (with pig offal, no less) by a sultry temptress known as Arabella.

Yes, women are the root of all evil. Jude is a strapping young man and he is distracted, as is to be expected, by the temptations of a woman. One thing leads to another and rather than the shining halls of Christminster, Jude is led down the aisle by Arabella because she has led him to believe that she is In Trouble. Eventually, their marriage turns sour and they separate. Jude vows to begin a life of chastity and study. However, he tracks down his cousin, Sue Bridehead, in whom he finds a kindred spirit. Sue everything that Arabella is not. Of course, he falls in love with Sue but can't have her.

So, the lives of Jude, Sue, Arabella, and his old schoolmaster Phillotson become entwined and tragic. I was actually sort of enjoying this book, despite the dire predictions and rumors that this book was really sad. Things weren't looking great for Jude and Sue, but I was going along with it, then BAM! About 3/4 of the way through I was absolutely blindsided by a plot twist that was so unexpected and horrible I gasped aloud. I was absolutely gobsmacked and had to stop reading (well, listening, as I was in the car with the audiobook.) It was almost 24 hours before I could pick it up again and I did not know what could possibly happen next -- how could things get worse? (They did.)

Clearly, Hardy had some very serious thoughts about the nature of marriage and love and happiness. I had read a bit about Hardy in Wikipedia and I knew that he had a very unhappy marriage; also, that Jude the Obscure was so controversial for its time, and that there was a great deal of backlash. Though Hardy lived another 30 years after the publication of Jude in 1895, he never published another novel, just plays and poems.

I cannot say that I liked Jude, but I can appreciate the writing and parts of the plot, but I don't think I can forgive Hardy for that terrible plot twist. Jude the Obscure definitely gets my vote for Most Depressing Book Ever.

There is also a film adaptation from 1996, which is out of print but there are still copies floating about. One of my library's branches has a copy so I put in a request. It is supposedly en route but now I don't know if I can bear to watch it. It does star Christopher Eccleston so it might be worth a look, but I just don't know. Here is a still from the film with Jude and Kate Winslet as cousin Sue:

The wonderful Rachel Griffiths is Arabella and Liam Cunningham is Jude's former tutor Phillotson. Who knew that the Onion Knight from Game of Thrones was in a Hardy adaptation? He is my favorite GoT character so I might take a look out of curiosity. 

Liam Cunningham as Davos Seaworth, the Onion Knight in Game of Thrones.

Should I bother watching the film version of Jude? Is it the most depressing book ever? Should I give Hardy another chance or are all of his novels just soul-crushing?

 I'm counting this as my Classic That Scares You for the Back to the Classics Challenge.

Effi Briest: The German Emma Bovary, But Less Interesting

I had really high hopes for this book -- a classic book, in translation, and a German classic no less! I really want to read more German books in translation (of course I don't read the language well enough to read the originals.) Sadly, there just aren't that many German books translated into English -- I guess the proliferation of American and British books just makes it that much harder to get attention from the English-reading public.

Anyway. I had heard about this book years ago and this felt like the right time, as I'm now living in Germany and Persephone Books reprinted Effi Briest last year, though they don't often publish books written by men. I'd heard it was sort of a German version of Madame Bovary. Well, to be honest, it is and it isn't. This review includes spoilers, so stop now if you don't want to know what happens.

The book begins with Effi Briest, seventeen and unmarried, still very much a schoolgirl. She's basically playing in the yard one day when she receives a proposal of marriage from a civil servant, Geert Instettan, a man more than twice her age who was once in love with her mother.  No, that's not creepy AT ALL. (Of course he was about her mother's age and obviously too young, as Madame von Briest married a much older man).

Anyway, she's very young and he's basically middle-aged and serious. They move off to town on the Baltic coast (which actually sounds lovely) and after giving birth to a daughter, Effi becomes bored. Her head is turned by a military officer named Crampas and they have an affair, which is basically them going on rides and walks together in the dunes. Eventually, her husband is transferred to Berlin so the affair ends. Years later, Effi is visiting a spa for her health and her husband finds a bundle of letters from Crampas and the inevitable happens. Naturally it ends badly for Effi.

Somehow this book disappointed me. I suppose I was expecting it to be more like Emma Bovary, whom I found a fascinating train wreck, but this book just dragged. I don't know if it was the translation or the writing style, but it took me nearly a month to finish this book which is just over 300 pages. Effi was certainly a sympathetic character, but I really didn't get a sense of great passion for Crampas. It was all very matter-of-fact -- I was expecting more scandal or dramatic tension, I guess. Even the ending wasn't terribly dramatic. I haven't read much German literature but I do remember that the writings of Goethe caused such a sensation that young people were literally committing suicide after reading The Sorrows of Young Werther (which I did try to read a few years ago and just could not get through). 

I haven't given up on German literature yet -- I do have a copy of Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks that looks interesting, though quite long. And recently I got completely hooked on the TV series Babylon Berlin which is set in 1929 -- I do love the time period between the wars, and I'm curious to learn more about the German perspective. It's based on a series of books and some of them have been translated into English, so I'll try to get my hands on a copy. (It's streaming in the U.S. on Netflix and it's really good, I highly recommend it). Can anyone recommend any other German books available in translation?

I'm counting this as my Classic By a New To Me Author for the Back to the Classics Challenge.

The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford

 

I took this one off the shelf at the library the other day because it was my lunch break and -- gasp! -- I'd left my book at home. The horror! But The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford was a) on my Classics Club list and b) short, under 200 pages, so it seemed like a win-win. It's a very short book, and yet I could talk about it for hours. 

Essentially, this is the story of two Edwardian-era couples with extremely dysfunctional marriages.  Edward and Leonora Ashburnham, a British couple, meet an American couple, John and Florence Dodwell, at a German resort, and begin a friendship that lasts for years. The narrator, the hapless John, has no idea that his wife Florence has been carrying on an affair with Edward for years, until both Edward and Florence are both dead. In a rambling narrative, the reader gets the story of the couples' friendship and the subsequent affair, just as though one was sitting down having a series of drinks with John and he was recounting the tragic story in person (possibly on a veranda in the tropics, with an ocean view and some nice cocktails, or seated in deep leather chairs in a gentleman's club.)

What seems a straightforward, though tragic story is eventually revealed to include a lot of twists and turns, with lies and hypocrisy and characters you just want to shake or smack upside the head. The ending left me flabbergasted and full of questions, and I so wish that I had chosen this book to discuss back when I belonged to a face-to-face classic book discussion group a few years ago. 

This book was published 100 years ago, in 1915, and I imagine it was groundbreaking for its time, mostly because of the style of writing -- I wouldn't call it stream-of-consciousness, but it doesn't really follow a linear progression. It digresses and rambles, but it's still really insightful and beautifully written. The Ashburnhams are trapped in a loveless marriage, yet they are loathe to admit it or even consider divorce. The Dodwells are from old moneyed families from the northeastern U.S., but I imagine that's fairly similar in regards to the upright, "stiff upper lip" sort of attitude of most of these characters. 

As I was reading it, I immediately recalled another book that really stuck with me, Graham Greene's The End of the Affair, which I finished just a few weeks ago. I can definitely see how Ford must have influenced Greene -- the two books are almost companion pieces, with Greene's being the flip side, the adulterer instead of the cuckolded husband. The marriages of these characters are both tragic and heartbreaking, but at the same time, I felt like the characters mostly deserved what they got, in the end -- yet another case of fascinating train wrecks. 

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 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?

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?

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.

Fascinating Train Wrecks

A few months ago, when I was reading Summer by Edith Wharton, I started comparing it to two of my other favorite Wharton novels, House of Mirth and Ethan Frome.  Both of those novels have characters that I liked, despite their flaws, and I loved both of those books despite the fact that I knew they wouldn't end well.  Both Ethan and House of Mirth's Lily Bart are on downward spirals -- Lily in particular is a real train wreck who makes one bad decision after another; yet, I couldn't stop reading the book. 

I've noticed a lot of my favorite classics have characters like these, which I like to call fascinating train wrecks.  These characters are sometimes unappealing or unlikeable, but somehow, the authors elevate them and their stories in such a way that I have to keep reading.  I've begun to compile a list of my favorites, below. (WARNING! Spoiler alert -- if you haven't read some or any of these books, you may want to skip this posting).

1.  Lily Bart in House of Mirth by Edith Wharton.  The entire novel is one downward spiral of Lily's bad decisions, one after another.  Well, at least she doesn't drag anyone down with her, like so many other characters.

2.  Ethan Frome -- eponymous novel by Edith Wharton.  It's a Wharton novel, so it ends up badly.  However, Ethan really does try to do the right thing.

3.  Madame Bovary, courtesy of Gustave Flaubert.  Wow, she is just trouble.  Like Lily Bart, she makes one bad decision after another.  The trouble with Emma Bovary is that she ruins so many other lives in the process.  A wretched, unlikeable character, yet I found the story fascinating.

4.  Richard Carston in Bleak House.   He is so naive and doggedly determined to get his hands on the Jarndyce fortune, despite the fact that generations of potential heirs have lived and died without seeing a single penny.  He just will not give up!

5.  Kitty in The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham.  She has an affair with a callous diplomat while her husband is posted in Hong Kong.  To punish her, said husband, a doctor specializing in infectious diseases, decides to pack up and take her to a cholera-ridden region of China, where it's likely they will both die.

6. Philip Carey in Of Human Bondage, also by W. Somerset Maugham.  an orphaned boy, born with a clubfoot, marries a woman who makes his life a living hell.  Oh, and it's 600 pages long --  sounds promising, right?  It's wonderful.  I was blown away.   And it's one of the first classics I read for pleasure, and probably one of the first that made me realize that classics don't suck.

7.  Paul Morel in Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence. Not an orphan (hence, the title), but this guy's mother makes his life hell.   I was sure I'd hate it, but it was also surprisingly fascinating.


8.  Rosamund Vincy in Middlemarch by George Eliot -- a supporting character train wreck, but her bad decisions are interesting and help flesh out the fascinating cast of characters.  Another doorstop of a Victorian novel, this was the only book I read for an entire month.  Absolutely worth it.

9.  The Joads in The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.  An entire train wreck family!  I had such fear of Steinbeck, but I loved Travels With Charley so I gave it a shot.  I was so pleasantly surprised at how compelling the story was.

10.  Bigger Thomas in Native Son by Richard Wright. Well, Bigger isn't on a downward spiral, since he pretty much starts at the bottom, an uneducated petty criminal in 1930s Chicago.  As a black man in that era, he can't get much lower, but it is surprising how quickly his life gets worse.  It's an absorbing read, but it's so awful I just wanted to take a shower after reading this.  I'm glad I read it but I really can't say I liked it.

Of course, there are many other literary train wrecks, but some of them I found extremely unlikeable.  Here is a short list of literary train wrecks I couldn't stand:

1.  Anna in Tolstoy's Anna Karenina -- couldn't wait for her final train trip!  It just went on and on. . . and she was such a crappy mother.  An offensive trainwreck, literally.

2.  Ernest in The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler.  A Victorian smear on the hypocrisy of the church.  It went on for waaaaay too long and he was such a doormat that I didn't feel sorry for him in the least, despite his horrible parents and train wreck of a marriage.  However, it was one of my first Victorians so maybe if I read it again I'd appreciate it more.

3.  Tess Durbeyfield in Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles.  Many people love this book.  I felt sorry for Tess but the story dragged on for so long that I lost patience, and by the end I just didn't care.  I think Hardy just stretched out too many scenes about hay making, or milking, or digging up turnips or something.  Maybe pastoral fiction is just not for me.

4.  Clyde Griffiths in An American Tragedy -- to be fair, this book started out really well, with a social climber on a downward spiral.  However, the last third of the book went on and on and on. . . and that pretty much killed it for me.  I found it tragically long, wish Dreiser had had a better editor.

5.  Cathy in Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.  Wow, she was a whiner -- I just wanted to smack her upside the head.  And her relationship with Heathcliff was so dysfunctional -- they really deserved each other.  I know many people love this book, but I just can't see the appeal.  Nowhere near as good as Jane Eyre (and I do realize that was written by her sister Charlotte, but I still think of them together).

So -- I'm sure there are some that I've missed.  Any more fascinating train wrecks I can add to my list?  I'd love to hear about some others.

Bleak House Readalong, Week 6

Richard Carston, train wreck (and Esther, not a train wreck)

Well, I'm up to week 6 of Bleak House and it is really getting good.  I did wonder if I just loved the book because of the fabulous BBC adaptation, which I love.  Happily, the book is even more wonderful than the miniseries.

I'm more than halfway through the book, and there have been all kinds of plot developments -- Richard Carston is getting deeper and deeper into trouble, and a sleazy lawyer named Vholes has gotten his hooks into him, courtesy of Mr. Skimpole.  What a pair!  Richard is such a train wreck!!  Richard refuses to give up hope that his cut of the Jarndyce fortune is just around the corner, despite the fact that generations of people have lived and died without seeing a penny, including a distant relative that blew his brains out in despair over it.

I've got to hand it to Dickens, once again for creating such perfectly named characters.   Vholes -- is there any doubt that this guy is bad news?  Is he a vulture, a vampire, or a rodent (or should I say a rhodent?)??  This does not bode well for Richard, or for Ada, whose fortune is tied with his, especially now that she has pledged her undying love to him.  Girl needs a sassy gay friend, like, right now!!

Meanwhile, things are not looking good for either Sargent George, who is also in trouble courtesy of Tulkinghorn and Smallweed.  Like Richard, they're putting the screws on him financially because they want proof of the late Captain Hawdon's writing.  And in related news, Mr. Guppy has managed to trace Esther's family to Lady Dedlock, and Tulkinghorn knows something is up.

Esther Summerson, our heroine

And by the way, did I mention Esther has managed to avoid dying of smallpox?  Of course there was never any real danger of her death, as she narrates half the book.  That would be a major plot development, if the narrator died!  We'd have to switch to suddenly having the omniscient narrator take over.

Esther is actually starting to grow on me as a character.  She's not as sickly sweet as I imagined before.  She's really nice to Caddy Turveydrop (nee Jellyby) and to Charlie, her new maid.  Though, as I've mentioned, I really don't see why she adores Ada so much.  Girl needs some serious character development.

One thing about Esther and Ada has really occurred to me -- I think the real love story in this book might be Esther and Ada.  I don't mean in a sexual way -- I once read that the real love story in Sense and Sensibility is between the two Dashwood sisters (though their characters are far better defined, in my humble opinion).  It just reminds me of that, how they adore each other so much.  The reader doesn't really know anything about Ada's history, just that she's also an orphan and a ward of the court regarding Jarndyce.  Maybe the reason she and Esther are so close is that they're both orphans and this is the closest they've ever had to a loving family, like sisters.  Lord knows Esther's godmother treated her like dirt her entire life -- it seems like living at Bleak House has been the happiest her life has ever been, so that's sort of understandable.

Anyway -- the story is really getting good, and some major plot developments are about to happen.  Stay tuned!!