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chairmanbernanke's review against another edition
4.0
A populated novel on a rural agricultural community and its seasons.
willo_roe's review against another edition
dark
- Loveable characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
The first Zola I read when I was a teenager, I found it utterly gripping. So this is my second reading and I think that the modern translation by Brian Nelson and Julie Rose is wonderful. Probably the best of the Rougon-Macquart series. Zola really doesn't like landowning peasants!
moncoinlecture's review against another edition
2.0
Limite 1,5
J'ai DÉTESTÉ ces personnages... vraiment... Il paraît que c'est le préféré de Zola. Mettons qu'on n'a pas les mêmes goûts.
J'ai DÉTESTÉ ces personnages... vraiment... Il paraît que c'est le préféré de Zola. Mettons qu'on n'a pas les mêmes goûts.
_phaedra's review against another edition
4.0
J'ai globalement beaucoup aimé. Certains chapitres étaient cependant longs et ennuyeux. Je pense au milieu du livre ou l'histoire s'essouffle un peu (les vendanges et les chapitres ou Fouan alterne chez ses enfants). Mais le dernier quart du livre rattrape le coup. Après un milieu laborieux pour la lecture, j'ai lu la fin d'une traite sans pouvoir m'arrêter. Quelle fin...
wwwait_whatsup's review against another edition
5.0
Relentlessly, shockingly obscene story of rural village life and land disputes. Often incredibly funny. Zola takes so much care to outline the economic and social realities that shape the people that everything has a queasy plausibility. There is no reason a farming town would be excepted from the war of all against all. The central plot really reminds me of Succession but with higher stakes for less to gain.
legallois's review against another edition
2.0
I tried this book in both French and English. I wanted to like it but it's impossible to enjoy or recommend. The review's going to be long but long story short, read a different book.
The storylines are brutal, particularly towards the middle and end. The words rape, murder and violence don't quite describe the depravity contained in the pages of this novel. I have a huge problem with the level of this unnecessary violence but despite that, I'll try to review the novel on its own terms, accepting that violence and filth is what he was going for.
The theme that keeps springing to mind while reading this novel is that the food we eat, the wars we fight and the lives we lead are all reliant or a result of the earth. The earth that we cover with manure and that filth that the characters of this book cover themselves with and fight in. The humans of this novel are uncivilised beasts. Unlikeable, despicable characters to the point of wanting to never read about them ever again. To that end, Zola succeeded in portraying the world he needed for his theme.
There is some great writing in certain chapters. Chapter 2 of Part 2 springs to mind, as does the scene where Père Fouan is wandering around in the rain all night. I wish all of the chapters and scenes were executed as expertly as those were.
What went wrong for me? Quite a bit.
Firstly, the writing is often confusing because Zola is constantly shifting between dialogue and narration without speech tags (particularly in the French version). Sometimes I'd find myself halfway through a sentence before realising that he'd switched from dialogue back to narration again. Then there's the fact that he often wanders into huge character backstories, political essays masquerading as dialogue and long descriptions about things that break the flow of his narrative. If Zola cut out all the fat, this novel could have been half as long and twice as good.
Many of his paragraphs are huge and contain way too many different subjects, leading to poor flow and organisation of thought. I read the first part of the novel in French but was forced to switch to English just because of how confusing it is to follow what or who Zola is talking about in the more poorly written chapters. It's easy to find yourself in a situation where you understand all the words on the page but don't know what they're referring to.
The writing of scenes varies but for the majority of the novel, Zola is telling rather than showing. Just like he will launch into a huge character backstory, he'll often summarise and condense important scenes and events rather than describing them as they happen. The concept of a scene seems lost in this novel actually, because scenes aren't really separated and because of backstories, we're jumping in, out and back into scenes frequently.
The characters
The confusion I described above also extends to Zola's cast of characters. He has a lot of characters in this novel and he uses an omniscient 'god narrator' point of view. The problem is that his character development for most of those characters is weak, to the point that I often found myself forgetting who different side characters were and how they connected to the story. In one scene where a woman dies of heat stroke in a field, I'd forgotten who she was and so I didn't care. Sometimes I'd come across entire chapters focussing on characters I'd forgotten about.
I found Zola's representation of women upsetting and it made me want to quit the book several times. The women and young girls in this book are raped, beaten, insulted, murdered, fantasised about and the scene where a pregnant woman is stabbed in the belly, killing the child inside is just horrible. Again though, I'll try to review this on its own brutal and perverted terms.
One of the issues is I find the reactions and thought processes of the women after these horrible experiences ridiculous. For example, one of the main characters has lived with physical abuse and the threat of rape for years, then finally long after she escaped, her brother in law finally manages to rape her in front of her sister who helped him hold her down. What does she think? "Oh well maybe I love him and not my husband". The same character has an equally improbable thought process after being raped twice in a row by two different people. Basically "oh well that ruined my day, at least I'm not dead... now let's go and pile up some more wheat".
Then in another scene, we've got a woman and a cow giving birth in the same house. The husband comes into the birthing room of the woman spreading cow dung through the house and carrying a decapitated cow's head. The reaction of the woman who's in labour is basically "oh that's a shame about the dead calf". I get it, cows were important to this society but what the hell, she's meant to be in labour and in intense pain. Her emotions and her reactions don't match the situation.
My point is, Zola represented the brutality of all of this violence against women but he did a very bad job of representing the mental anguish and psychological torture that would have resulted. I get the impression that he only thought of these objectifying scenes from a voyeuristic point of view, something that I as a reader find inexcusable. Sometimes when I heard the thoughts of one of his male characters fantasising about the underage girl in the book, it sent shivers down my spine because I suspect that I'm simply reading the author's own fantasies.
The storylines are brutal, particularly towards the middle and end. The words rape, murder and violence don't quite describe the depravity contained in the pages of this novel. I have a huge problem with the level of this unnecessary violence but despite that, I'll try to review the novel on its own terms, accepting that violence and filth is what he was going for.
The theme that keeps springing to mind while reading this novel is that the food we eat, the wars we fight and the lives we lead are all reliant or a result of the earth. The earth that we cover with manure and that filth that the characters of this book cover themselves with and fight in. The humans of this novel are uncivilised beasts. Unlikeable, despicable characters to the point of wanting to never read about them ever again. To that end, Zola succeeded in portraying the world he needed for his theme.
There is some great writing in certain chapters. Chapter 2 of Part 2 springs to mind, as does the scene where Père Fouan is wandering around in the rain all night. I wish all of the chapters and scenes were executed as expertly as those were.
What went wrong for me? Quite a bit.
Firstly, the writing is often confusing because Zola is constantly shifting between dialogue and narration without speech tags (particularly in the French version). Sometimes I'd find myself halfway through a sentence before realising that he'd switched from dialogue back to narration again. Then there's the fact that he often wanders into huge character backstories, political essays masquerading as dialogue and long descriptions about things that break the flow of his narrative. If Zola cut out all the fat, this novel could have been half as long and twice as good.
Many of his paragraphs are huge and contain way too many different subjects, leading to poor flow and organisation of thought. I read the first part of the novel in French but was forced to switch to English just because of how confusing it is to follow what or who Zola is talking about in the more poorly written chapters. It's easy to find yourself in a situation where you understand all the words on the page but don't know what they're referring to.
The writing of scenes varies but for the majority of the novel, Zola is telling rather than showing. Just like he will launch into a huge character backstory, he'll often summarise and condense important scenes and events rather than describing them as they happen. The concept of a scene seems lost in this novel actually, because scenes aren't really separated and because of backstories, we're jumping in, out and back into scenes frequently.
The characters
The confusion I described above also extends to Zola's cast of characters. He has a lot of characters in this novel and he uses an omniscient 'god narrator' point of view. The problem is that his character development for most of those characters is weak, to the point that I often found myself forgetting who different side characters were and how they connected to the story. In one scene where a woman dies of heat stroke in a field, I'd forgotten who she was and so I didn't care. Sometimes I'd come across entire chapters focussing on characters I'd forgotten about.
I found Zola's representation of women upsetting and it made me want to quit the book several times. The women and young girls in this book are raped, beaten, insulted, murdered, fantasised about and the scene where a pregnant woman is stabbed in the belly, killing the child inside is just horrible. Again though, I'll try to review this on its own brutal and perverted terms.
One of the issues is I find the reactions and thought processes of the women after these horrible experiences ridiculous. For example, one of the main characters has lived with physical abuse and the threat of rape for years, then finally long after she escaped, her brother in law finally manages to rape her in front of her sister who helped him hold her down. What does she think? "Oh well maybe I love him and not my husband". The same character has an equally improbable thought process after being raped twice in a row by two different people. Basically "oh well that ruined my day, at least I'm not dead... now let's go and pile up some more wheat".
Then in another scene, we've got a woman and a cow giving birth in the same house. The husband comes into the birthing room of the woman spreading cow dung through the house and carrying a decapitated cow's head. The reaction of the woman who's in labour is basically "oh that's a shame about the dead calf". I get it, cows were important to this society but what the hell, she's meant to be in labour and in intense pain. Her emotions and her reactions don't match the situation.
My point is, Zola represented the brutality of all of this violence against women but he did a very bad job of representing the mental anguish and psychological torture that would have resulted. I get the impression that he only thought of these objectifying scenes from a voyeuristic point of view, something that I as a reader find inexcusable. Sometimes when I heard the thoughts of one of his male characters fantasising about the underage girl in the book, it sent shivers down my spine because I suspect that I'm simply reading the author's own fantasies.
blueyorkie's review against another edition
5.0
Another uppercut in the total groin: Zola is in great shape. I believe a true masterpiece: The Earth, at least the one that speaks to me the most among Rougon-Macquart!
As always, old Émile is well documented, and one almost feels the land of Beauce under our nose. Here is an excellent tonic and documentary novel, as was the author's intention in writing the cycle of Rougon-Macquart. This tome is one of the four or five best in the sequence, if not a little better, which is saying a lot. Here, Jean Macquart (Gervaise's brother in the Assommoir), hired by the big operator of the area and mayor of the village, Hourdequin, is desperately trying to introduce new farming techniques and faces his refractory workforce.
The Fouan family is the other big pole of the book. It is reminiscent of the original Rougon-Macquart family (see La Fortune des Rougon ) with its flaws and vices. First is the heritage of old Fouan, where we do not know who is the most stingy and the readiest to bleed his family, between the father and the children. His young son, Buteau, is a paragon of avarice, greed, brutality, and harshness (well, it's true; do not look too nuanced here at Zola).
Despite Zola's resolutely polemic turn to his rural fresco, I found all the flaws and the mentality of the peasant world I encountered in my travels on literature in the early twentieth century. Of course, no baseness of this world will be spared, but is it not a vision, undoubtedly disillusioned? Indeed, a slight caricature, magnified or condensed, but primarily suitable, relevant, of the human in the broad sense?
Emile Zola shows us our species stripped of its frail shell of "good manners," this varnish of civilization; it shows us rough, rough, gruff, but without fuss, a little as if you had direct access to what think those who made us smile on the surface. So I leave you to read and dig up rotten bulbs, for which we are a bit prepared.
I award a Special Mention for the character of "the great," old Fouan's sister, a real old wicked woman who enjoys sowing discord. (the role of "the old woman harmful" is a classic Zola and returns in many of his novels; would he have accounts to settle on that side?) and discord within his family while being as loving as an extensive drystone.
I give another Special Mention to the "Jesus Christ" character, the eldest son of the old Fouan, a chronic alcoholic who is determined never to work, an exceptional pyromaniac who offers the author the opportunity to sign a hilarious chapter (part four, chapter 3).
As always, old Émile is well documented, and one almost feels the land of Beauce under our nose. Here is an excellent tonic and documentary novel, as was the author's intention in writing the cycle of Rougon-Macquart. This tome is one of the four or five best in the sequence, if not a little better, which is saying a lot. Here, Jean Macquart (Gervaise's brother in the Assommoir), hired by the big operator of the area and mayor of the village, Hourdequin, is desperately trying to introduce new farming techniques and faces his refractory workforce.
The Fouan family is the other big pole of the book. It is reminiscent of the original Rougon-Macquart family (see La Fortune des Rougon ) with its flaws and vices. First is the heritage of old Fouan, where we do not know who is the most stingy and the readiest to bleed his family, between the father and the children. His young son, Buteau, is a paragon of avarice, greed, brutality, and harshness (well, it's true; do not look too nuanced here at Zola).
Despite Zola's resolutely polemic turn to his rural fresco, I found all the flaws and the mentality of the peasant world I encountered in my travels on literature in the early twentieth century. Of course, no baseness of this world will be spared, but is it not a vision, undoubtedly disillusioned? Indeed, a slight caricature, magnified or condensed, but primarily suitable, relevant, of the human in the broad sense?
Emile Zola shows us our species stripped of its frail shell of "good manners," this varnish of civilization; it shows us rough, rough, gruff, but without fuss, a little as if you had direct access to what think those who made us smile on the surface. So I leave you to read and dig up rotten bulbs, for which we are a bit prepared.
I award a Special Mention for the character of "the great," old Fouan's sister, a real old wicked woman who enjoys sowing discord. (the role of "the old woman harmful" is a classic Zola and returns in many of his novels; would he have accounts to settle on that side?) and discord within his family while being as loving as an extensive drystone.
I give another Special Mention to the "Jesus Christ" character, the eldest son of the old Fouan, a chronic alcoholic who is determined never to work, an exceptional pyromaniac who offers the author the opportunity to sign a hilarious chapter (part four, chapter 3).