Product Description

Set in the claustrophobic atmosphere of a dingy haberdasher's shop in the passage du Pont-Neuf in Paris, this powerful novel tells how the heroine and her lover, Laurent, kill her husband, Camille, but are subsequently haunted by visions of the dead man and prevented from enjoying the fruits of their crime. Published in 1867, this is Zola's most important work before the Rougon-Macquart series and introduces many of the themes that can be traced through the later novel cycle.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #71076 in Books
• Published on: 2004-07-29
• Original language: French
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

About the Author
Emile Zola (1840-1902) was the leading figure in the French school of naturalistic fiction. His principal work, Les Rougon-Macquart, is a panorama of mid-19th century French life, in a cycle of 20 novels which Zola wrote over a period of 22 years. Robin Buss is a journalist and translator. His most recent translations for Penguin include The Plague by Camus and The Black Tulip by Dumas. He lives in London.

Customer Reviews

A cautionary tale
I read this book about a month ago, and I still think about it a lot - despite having since read other books. That alone tells me what a great read it was. Having read other customer reviews prior to buying the book, I expected a ghastly tale of murder, incest and any other human act that, in 1867-1868 might have led to an author being hung! However, what I found in this book was a cautionary tale of how love does not conquer all, and Zola's brilliant interpretation of the distinction between lust and love. Zola paints a highly imaginable picture of the characters' lives, and yes, he does dissect these characters according to then current beliefs about human nature. But what we must remember is that these are his interpretations of what psychological processes could abound after an act of murder carried out in the throes of love, or lust, whichever the reader believes it to be. In modern times we have psychologists to theorise, experiment with and suggest hypotheses pertaining to human behaviour - a discipline that has arisen only over the last century. Books such as this one by Zola enable a valuable insight into what thoughts of human behaviour existed during the 19th century, thoughts that were possibly shared by many, but only one dared voice. Read it for what it is, a tragic love story, and try not to focus on Zola's psychological dissection, and you will enjoy a story rarely told so greatly.

A darkness that throws so much light
If Emile Zola was writing today he might have been a screen writer. The images, atmosphere, and characterisation in this novel play a desperate film noir in your head that will replay there perhaps for ever.

The modernity of this book is startling. It is almost impossible to believe it was first published in 1867. It is a gripping, seething tale of neglect, bitterness, and lust that turns to horror and despair as its key protagonists crave redemption and release.

Therese is the adopted daughter of a simple haberdasher and her feeble son. She has learnt young to expect nothing from life, and is not disappointed. She marries the son only because it pleases the mother, and, after all, what else is there? It is a life of such alienation and boredom that only a writer as great as Zola could portray it and yet hold the reader in anticipation of what is to follow. And what follows is altogether more eventful: passion described with a vividness that is shockingly erotic; violence that makes the reader wince; fear that haunts you between each reading.

By the time the tale twists into its downward spiral you may fear that Zola does not know where to take it next. It circles for a while in repetitious misery. But the author is only preparing himself for a final assault that leaves you closing the book as if it were a prematurely opened grave: with a mix of terror and fascination.

But most remarkably of all, Zola has somehow, in this story of desperately lost eighteenth century Parisian souls, found qualities and frailties that are so universal and so poignant that you care even as these creatures tear themselves and each other to pieces. He understands as well, maybe better, than any writer how human beings will build a whole world on even the flimsiest foundation and fill it with all their aspirations - and disenchantments. And so the needy become the passionate; the petty the desperate; the melancholy the murderer. And the murderer the sad and lonely child.

For all that Zola has laid the dysfunction of each of his characters so bare you can hardly bear to look, he somehow allows you still to see their souls. Incredibly the ending fills you with sorrow almost as much as with horror.

Highly Enjoyable
At first glance, the plot seems to be fairly routine, and perhaps a little boring. I thought this to be in the same vein as Chopin's "Awakening" or perhaps even "Moll Flanders". The title and blurb for this book are misleading, seeming to sell this novel as a romance, especially with the description of Laurent as 'earthy' and the 'animal passion' he shares with Therese, and did not immediately appeal to me. This is near-criminal, as it fails to stress the books chilling and pscyhological aspects that make it such an interesting read.

For this is far more than a simple passion/crime novel, but rather an intense, claustrophobic and highly enjoyable insight into the fracturing of two guilt-ridden, egotistical and self-pitying characters, so fully realised and superbly depicted, and shades of both Balzac and Dostoyevsky abound.

This novel might be described as a horror, a moral fable or a tragic romance. Above all of this though, it is a pscyhological thriller, highly symbolic, yet exciting and morbidly appealing in its entirety.