Emile Zola Therese Raquin Pdf
You know how it is. Your mother marries you to your sexless cousin and in silent defiance you enter a torrid affair with a peasant painter. All those hours spent humouring the dull man in your dreary shop, waiting for your next animalistic tussle with your fiery lover. Then one day, you realise the conventions of early 19thC society are going to prevent you from ditching the boring old blood tie, and you will never be free to give yourself to true love.God, the boredom! I mean, you can’t even You know how it is. Your mother marries you to your sexless cousin and in silent defiance you enter a torrid affair with a peasant painter. All those hours spent humouring the dull man in your dreary shop, waiting for your next animalistic tussle with your fiery lover.
Then one day, you realise the conventions of early 19thC society are going to prevent you from ditching the boring old blood tie, and you will never be free to give yourself to true love.God, the boredom! I mean, you can’t even knit properly, can you? That last cardigan was missing an armhole and wasn’t even big enough for my nephew!
So what do you have to live for? You are, after all, a docile little mouse brimming with despair and desperation whose only chance at happiness lies in the arms of a bone-idle gadabout who only wanted a quick shag anyway.
Perhaps if he bumped off your other half, made it look like an accident?Oh now you’ve gone and done it. Didn’t I warn you watching your husband drown would come back to haunt you?
How do you expect to look your mother in the eye ever again, you dozy bint? I suppose it’ll have to be several years of mental torment, depression and unrelenting misery, followed by a teary confession to your paralysed mother, until someone finally pours you a cup of poison and ends your sorry lot once and for all.Hold out, there’s hope. But not in this book.
This is the kind of book you survive, an obstacle course for masochists, the only people who will truly love it, don't get me wrong a very talented writer in his first important novel shows his skill, but he has a tendency to wallow in misery, giving a reader too many painful scenes. Zola believes, to be taken seriously, he needs to inflict the maximum pain, a simple murder case becomes a protracted story even though a short novel, it seems an eternity.Critics called the book pornographic This is the kind of book you survive, an obstacle course for masochists, the only people who will truly love it, don't get me wrong a very talented writer in his first important novel shows his skill, but he has a tendency to wallow in misery, giving a reader too many painful scenes. Zola believes, to be taken seriously, he needs to inflict the maximum pain, a simple murder case becomes a protracted story even though a short novel, it seems an eternity.Critics called the book pornographic when published in 1867, ( mild by today's standards, if there are any) thus becoming a bestseller and making Zola at 27 a famous author. Now to begin; a couple that have known each other from childhood get married, not very unusual, this being the 19th century, still not shocking either because they are cousins. Therese is born in North Africa, her father is a French soldier there, a child from a native woman, no marriage, the mother dies, he a French captain in the army of conquest, brings the baby to his sister Madame Raquin in France, a widow, quickly leaves and goes back to Africa, to fight wars, years pass nothing is heard about the captain until he perishes there.
Madame grows to love Therese, treats her like a daughter, a quiet girl that keeps her hate hidden deep inside, she has a sickly son the old woman, Camille does, a small pale figure illness keeps him mostly in bed, which the children share together. Therese feels revulsion toward her ghastly cousin but silent, causing no trouble, the only thing she enjoys is watching the Seine river flow. Madame sells her little store in the country and to Paris she travels. Soon opens another dingy little shop in a dark alley that connects two important streets.
Small shops with trinkets, hats and toys, cheap merchandise sold to poor working class pedestrians going. Madame persuades Therese to become her son's wife, Therese doesn't abject, she just requires a place to live, the security of a home. Her husband, works as a clerk, brings home his best friend, Laurent, a strong, big man from a peasant family, a fellow clerk at work. Well before long Laurent and Therese begin to notice each other and like what they see.the woman thinks Laurent is a real man, he would enjoy having a mistress, for a brief time, nothing to lose. A secret affair starts and life would be perfect if Camille wasn't around.permanently. Some calls this a story of 'sin, murder and revenge', as two human animals ( Zola's words ) do what comes naturally.
Somewhere within the spectrum occupied by anything from Romeo and Juliet to Tromeo and Juliet, there is a well-trodden path full of whispers, whimpers and piercing screams about the miseries of the love process. Whether you are tragically in love with your enemy's hottie boomdottie tween daughter or banging your best friend's girlfriend in an alleyway behind a bar all 2-minute-meal-style, Jonathan Richman had it almost exactly right when he explained to his (soon to be) adoring fans that 'true Somewhere within the spectrum occupied by anything from Romeo and Juliet to Tromeo and Juliet, there is a well-trodden path full of whispers, whimpers and piercing screams about the miseries of the love process. Whether you are tragically in love with your enemy's hottie boomdottie tween daughter or banging your best friend's girlfriend in an alleyway behind a bar all 2-minute-meal-style, Jonathan Richman had it almost exactly right when he explained to his (soon to be) adoring fans that 'true love is not nice.' As an afterthought to Johnny Boy's sage words, I would like to extend that lyric to include the concept of 'true lust.'
Because there is (sadly, more often that not, though not ideally) a difference. 'True Lust' in the sense that I am speaking of is an extension of infatuation, a sudden amorous obsession for another person fueled by the fact that your feelings for this individual (and the ensuing gropings and fornication-sessions) are wrong, dirty, hedonistic, secret, crass, selfish, and therefore exciting. People become bogged down by their lives, relationships go stale, the same old somebody starts to feel like a fly to shoo away, and you start cocking your head sideways in search of something (someone) new to serve as a sort of febreeze bottle for your life, your sense of self-satisfaction, and your general feelings of self-worth. Someone to fill the hole in your heart that really needs to be addressed by serious inner-dialogue rather than things like serial monogamy, cheating, hoeing around and the like. Unfortunately, we self-obsessed, naive, give-it-to-me-now modern folks tend to take the 'easy' way out, and so we spread our legs and pray for a miracle, regardless of who and what we may leave in the dust behind us. We direct our own issues toward another individual, projecting our pain onto them as if they are going to absorb it like a sponge, ring it out, and make it all wash away 1, 2, 3. With the exception of a few well-known cases of controversial love gone right (June and Johnny, John and Yoko, etc), what generally happens despite our best efforts to combat it is the wind eventually shifts and the dirt flies back in our faces anyway.and usually with increased density.
Oftentimes, the real killer is the guilt. Trust me when I say that sowing romance in the soil of controversy is like watering your seeds with lava.Well, this is a story about all that, however it is presented through a drastically heightened plot-line. You know, the old 'I don't want to give up the money but I want to keep having sex with you all the time and my husband is really just in proper cock-blocking form about the whole thing, so obviously our only option is to kill him' prickly pickly conundrum. Before you get angry at me for spoiling the story, however, keep in mind that this is only the beginning of what transpires.
Rather than wasting precious page-space on the elaborate thought-process leading up to this cold-blooded murder, Zola chose to focus his examination more closely on the aftershock of such a decision. The guilt.the way it kills passion, the way it eats you up inside and makes you detest whatever is associated with that acid-feeling in your stomach. You know, like that lover that was so important and true-lovey before. Through a series of brutal exchanges between the two main characters, Zola dissects the rationalizations we use to make shitty decisions which treat people like shit and turn us into shit, leaving us feeling all shitty in the end. Zola's perceptions about both the way we mask our true intentions and the way we rid ourselves of guilt are right on point. He has played this game before.
Everyone has done wrong by someone else for the sake of their own immediate gain. And sometimes, that wrong-doing involves strangling and drowning someone. It will, however, come back to haunt you in the end.
I will stop here, as this is about all that I can reveal without spoiling the story. Just know that there is some Raskolnikov-esque guilt-fueled lashing, but rather than directing it at themselves, the two lovebirds turn it on one another. And it gets.ugly. Butchya know.true lust is not nice, after all. Unless it is between two consenting adults who have, you know, actual love and respect mixed in there, as well. In which case by all means lust it up, kids. Get nasty astral.
'The Arcade of the Pont Neuf is not a place for a stroll. You take it to make a short cut, to gain a few minutes. It is traversed by busy people whose sole aim is to go quick and straight before them The arcade now assumes the aspect of a regular cut-throat alley. Great shadows stretch along the tiles, damp puffs of air enter from the street. Anyone might take the place for a subterranean gallery indistinctly lit-up by three funeral lamps.This nineteenth century French novel has a deliciously 'The Arcade of the Pont Neuf is not a place for a stroll. You take it to make a short cut, to gain a few minutes.
It is traversed by busy people whose sole aim is to go quick and straight before them The arcade now assumes the aspect of a regular cut-throat alley. Great shadows stretch along the tiles, damp puffs of air enter from the street. Anyone might take the place for a subterranean gallery indistinctly lit-up by three funeral lamps.This nineteenth century French novel has a deliciously dark atmosphere from page one. The Arcade of the Pont Neuf is home to a mercer shop that will take you into the depths of a psychological drama that might give you chills if you were to read this alone on a bleak and stormy night. Emphasizing the animal side of human nature, Emile Zola created two depraved characters in Laurent and Therese – ones that we should all hope to avoid a glimpse of within ourselves! How do emotions drive one to commit an act of evil? What are the consequences of these actions?
If we repent, will we be absolved of our sins? If repentance is not something the bestial self is capable of seeking, then what becomes of us?This book had some gruesome images that may make some flinch and others may find worthy of a great horror novel. I personally cringed and at the same time was fascinated by a most revolting description of a Parisian morgue. I was shocked to learn that it was in fact a favorite pastime for the people of Paris to visit the morgue and ogle the unfortunate inhabitants of this notorious attraction! 'The morgue is a sight within reach of everybody, and one to which passers-by, rich and poor alike, treat themselves.
The door stands open, and all are free to enter. There are admirers of the scene who go out of their way so as not to miss one of these performances of death.' I found this book to be quite riveting overall. Donde van a morir los elefantes jose donoso pdf writer pdf. There were times when it felt a bit repetitive and dragged slightly, but then it would shift and I would once more become submerged in the misery, depravity and psychological suspense. I would recommend this to those that enjoy classics and intense psychological studies. It is actually a very readable classic, so shouldn't necessarily exclude those that don't dip into the classics on a regular basis.
I read this book with morbid fascination, following with horror the deterioration of the sanity of the two main characters, Therese and Laurent. It's not a pleasant book to read. Quite the opposite. Zola wrote this book for men, not women. He didn't intend it to be regarded as a novel - which he considered to be for women, not men - but as an objective study of human behaviour which he likened to that of 'beasts'.
Knowing this, it's easy to read it as if we are watching two laboratory rats I read this book with morbid fascination, following with horror the deterioration of the sanity of the two main characters, Therese and Laurent. It's not a pleasant book to read. Quite the opposite.
Zola wrote this book for men, not women. He didn't intend it to be regarded as a novel - which he considered to be for women, not men - but as an objective study of human behaviour which he likened to that of 'beasts'. Knowing this, it's easy to read it as if we are watching two laboratory rats rather than human beings. It would be unkind to rats to compare them with this horrific, debased and senselessly cruel pair, however. This isn't Zola's finest hour but it is worth reading for the experience.
I Love Nature & Natural, but No More Novels of NaturalismIn my voracity for reading most of the so-called classic novels, I read this short one without knowing much about it, nor did I read (until later) the preface in which Zola says this is a study of temperaments and not characters, the basis of which is the now-discounted Galen's Four Temperaments. Apparently, this is a novel characterized as 'naturalism,' due to its scientific or detached narrative.The four temperaments are represented I Love Nature & Natural, but No More Novels of NaturalismIn my voracity for reading most of the so-called classic novels, I read this short one without knowing much about it, nor did I read (until later) the preface in which Zola says this is a study of temperaments and not characters, the basis of which is the now-discounted Galen's Four Temperaments. Apparently, this is a novel characterized as 'naturalism,' due to its scientific or detached narrative.The four temperaments are represented by Therese Raquin, an unhappily married young woman (melancholic), Madame Raquin, her overbearing and selfish aunt (choleric), Camille Raquin, her sickly, self-centered husband, who is also her 1st cousin (phlegmatic) all of whom all live together, and Laurent, interloping friend of the husband (sanguine). You might guess what happens. If so, great. If not, I don't wanna spoil all your insidious fun.Love Nature, All for the Naturals; No, Please, No More Naturalism.
Reading Zola surely sets the bar - I'd say he is the French Hardy but although they are both masters of their art and certainly like to dwell in the downer side of town, Zola deals with the city and the impact of the immediate environment and people on the psyche of the individual which isn't really an area that Hardy greatly concentrates on.Of course I've yet to read a lot of Zola so I could be wrong but going on the fact that he seems to be acknowledged as the trailblazer of the Human Superb. This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,Therese Raquin is not a very good novel. It does, however, have some very interesting parts. If you are a fan of noir fiction, you will easily pick up on some classic elements of the genre: two loser-lovers, a weak and whiney husband, a cast of additional characters that you also don’t like, and an increasingly oppressive atmosphere that blinks No Exit.For the first half of the book, all these elements mix nicely (or nastily).
Therese Raquin, who is part north African, is, as a child, Therese Raquin is not a very good novel. It does, however, have some very interesting parts. If you are a fan of noir fiction, you will easily pick up on some classic elements of the genre: two loser-lovers, a weak and whiney husband, a cast of additional characters that you also don’t like, and an increasingly oppressive atmosphere that blinks No Exit.For the first half of the book, all these elements mix nicely (or nastily).
Therese Raquin, who is part north African, is, as a child, abandoned by her soldier father to live with her aunt and sickly cousin, Camille, with whom she shares a bed. The father dies, and all we know of her mother is that she was a “great beauty,” who is also dead. Therese herself is described as thin-lipped and sharp featured. Sometimes she’s pretty, and other times she’s ugly. It’s a mood thing, I suppose, but for good reason, since her existence is a kind of death-in-life experience. Camille, who she more or less is forced to marry, is an idiot, and her aunt is an old fuddy duddy who moves the family from a nice country setting, to a dingy Paris alley, where she opens a haberdashery.
In the first pages of the book, there’s a telling scene that has Therese staring out her window at a black wall. Paint it Black!As the family settles into its routine, a weekly ritual of dominos with friends becomes part of the mix.
Enter Laurent, a friend of Camille’s from work. He’s a big lazy oaf from the country, who thinks of himself as an artist. Stuff happens, and before long Therese and Camille are going at it like nobody’s business. It’s hard not to recall, for example, The Postman Always Rings Twice:She stopped, gasping as though proud and avenged, holding Laurent, drunk with passion, on her breast. And in this bare and chilly room there were enacted scenes of burning lust, sinister in their brutality. Each fresh meeting brought still more frenzied ecstasies.Eventually Laurent’s long afternoons are noticed at work, and he’s forced to end his daily visits. Soon, in a vague sort of way, the lovers sense that Camille needs to go.
Emile Zola Therese Raquin Pdf 1
At this point in the novel, the killing chapter (Chapter 11), that strikes me as crime writing at its finest. There’s a bizarre Edenic setting by the river, which has Laurent, Mister King Snake, kissing Therese’s foot, while Camille snoozes. Later, they all go out in a boat and, well, do the murder math. This scene had me recalling Dreiser’s American Tragedy, and could, I believe, stand alone as a short story.Unfortunately, that’s the high point of the novel. There is a fascinatingly morbid trip to the morgue (Chapter 13) that goes well beyond the “science” of Zola’s claim that he was staking out Realism – for Art’s sake. It’s Sensationalism 101: bodies, slabs, dripping water, and eventually the rotting Camille. After that, the wheels fly off the novel is a spectacular way.
Immediately the lovers start feeling all paranoid, and wondering if they will be found out. This gets silly fast, as both Laurent and Therese find themselves jumping at shadows, as well as seeing and hearing things. Poe did this much better with the “Tell-Tale Heart.” Is it possible for two people to hallucinate the same specter?Camille calmly lay down between them, whilst Laurent wept over his impotence and Therese trembled lest the corpse might have the idea of using its victory to take her into its putrefied arms as her lawful master.This is not a supernatural novel, and yet this, and similar scenes, go on for pages and pages. The repetition is simply jaw-dropping. I almost gave up, but it’s a short book, and after a while I admit I kind of got into Zola’s demented excesses.
The ending is for the most part predictable, maybe even more coldly comforting than these two deserve. Zola offers up the epitaph about 50 pages before the end:Nothing existed but murder and lust.Yep, that’s about it. Zola's preface to the second edition of this novel, which is included in the audiobook version I listened to, confirms that the work caused quite a sensation when it was first published in 1867.
In the preface, Zola defends himself against charges of obscenity and states that the novel is in effect a detached and scientific study of the effect of temperament. While I'm not sure just how scientific and detached Zola really was, he was certainly scientific and detached enough for the novel to beZola's preface to the second edition of this novel, which is included in the audiobook version I listened to, confirms that the work caused quite a sensation when it was first published in 1867.
In the preface, Zola defends himself against charges of obscenity and states that the novel is in effect a detached and scientific study of the effect of temperament. While I'm not sure just how scientific and detached Zola really was, he was certainly scientific and detached enough for the novel to be regarded as an early example of naturalism.It's a great read, but only if you're interested both in psychology and in reading about deeply unpleasant people making very poor life choices.
It features an unhappy marriage, adultery, murder, guilt and paranoia: all the fun stuff. But the prose is wonderful, the atmosphere Zola creates is dark and claustrophobic and the ending is full of suspense.I listened to a French language audiobook, available for free from.
There's another free French language audiobook out there. Avoid it at all costs. I listened to the first chapter and the narrator is simply awful. Therese Raquin is Madame Bovary on steroids. The young Zola was impressed by Bovary, and its influence is clear throughout Raquin - but he ratchets every aspect of the story up, for better and.well, mostly for worse; this isn't as good as Bovary.Mainly that's because Zola is no match at all for Flaubert psychologically. Bovary is as trenchant a view inside the human brain as I've read outside Tolstoy; laser-focused and brilliant.
Zola, by contrast, is muddling about with some almost Medieval Therese Raquin is Madame Bovary on steroids. The young Zola was impressed by Bovary, and its influence is clear throughout Raquin - but he ratchets every aspect of the story up, for better and.well, mostly for worse; this isn't as good as Bovary.Mainly that's because Zola is no match at all for Flaubert psychologically. Bovary is as trenchant a view inside the human brain as I've read outside Tolstoy; laser-focused and brilliant. Zola, by contrast, is muddling about with some almost Medieval notions of sanguine (that means optimistic) vs.
Nervous temperaments. It's all a mess, and unfortunately Zola hammers the shit out of it, and it all feels sophomoric.On the other hand, once you get past the psychological mumbo-jumbo, it's a fiercely intense book - straining at its sleeves with dread and tension. You thought Bovary had some unlikable characters?
You ain't seen nothin'. Raquin's two leads are despicable, irredeemable cesspools of humanity.Zola is a visual writer. Manet's Olympia, above, isn't crucial to the story, but my footnotes pointed it out several times and I was glad I went and found it, so as a public service, here it is. Note the cat on the right.More importantly, he describes the alleys of mid-19th century Paris in wonderful sludgy detail, particularly the oozing Seine.Raquin is shockingly gruesome, especially for its time but even now.
Edgar Allen Poe sought consciously to shock his audience, because he thought it would bring him attention: 'But whether the horrific shit of which I speak are, or are not in bad taste is little to the purpose. To be appreciated you must be read, and these things are invariably sought after with avidity.'
(Edgar Allan Poe to Thomas W. White — April 30, 1835) The same strategy is at play here. (And it's clear from a shoutout to Poe's obsession with being buried alive that Zola's aware of this lesson.) In the last half of the book, the horror ratchets up to a Grand Guignol level: Therese invites a beating to her stomach in order to miscarry; a cat is murdered; and most of all, there's the awful spectacle of Mme. Raquin, paralyzed and forced to watch her two surrogate children confess savagely to her biological son's murder night after night. I know some perfectly smart readers who just choose not to handle books about terrible people. Those friends of mine don't like Madame Bovary.
(Or for another example.) If you're one of those people, holy shit, do not read this book. But if you like the shadows.here are the things that ooze in them. I have never read a book do unrelenting dark and foreboding.The prose is just brilliant in this book.There are some really bone chilling moments in this book easily as chilling as Edgar Allen Poe's writing.Eventhough this was grim and dark to the very last page I found if very difficult to put down.So this is French literature. I have to say the writing was astounding and I will read more Zola and explore more French literature.Definitely one of the great writers and glad to have decided I have never read a book do unrelenting dark and foreboding.The prose is just brilliant in this book.There are some really bone chilling moments in this book easily as chilling as Edgar Allen Poe's writing.Eventhough this was grim and dark to the very last page I found if very difficult to put down.So this is French literature. I have to say the writing was astounding and I will read more Zola and explore more French literature.Definitely one of the great writers and glad to have decided to read his work after learning that James Joyce admired his work.In a nutshell. Zola Zola Zola.Will we ever go through a novel of yours without someone being murdered, attempted to be murdered, or at least plotted to be?
No, I am not complaining, it does not feel repetitive at all, at least not in a negative way.What we see here is typical gritty and savage prose by Zola. Two lovers find themselves in a sticky situation. Forbidden love with a married lady, spouse to your own friend. You can easily see how this sets it up for a great psychological suspense novel with an Zola Zola Zola.Will we ever go through a novel of yours without someone being murdered, attempted to be murdered, or at least plotted to be? No, I am not complaining, it does not feel repetitive at all, at least not in a negative way.What we see here is typical gritty and savage prose by Zola. Two lovers find themselves in a sticky situation.
Forbidden love with a married lady, spouse to your own friend. This was my first e-book - the dealer gave me an iPad when I leased my car, and since I was heading out of town I decided to try it out by downloading this 'book,' which was free. I think I would've read it a lot quicker if it had been a real book, but who wants to deal with some weird apple-y screen that highlights and flips pages around when you touch it?
Yuck!Anyway, whatever. I prefer my books in book form, but in either format, this book was awesome! If you're a fan of James M.
Emile Zola Therese Raquin En Francais
Cain et This was my first e-book - the dealer gave me an iPad when I leased my car, and since I was heading out of town I decided to try it out by downloading this 'book,' which was free. I think I would've read it a lot quicker if it had been a real book, but who wants to deal with some weird apple-y screen that highlights and flips pages around when you touch it? Yuck!Anyway, whatever. I prefer my books in book form, but in either format, this book was awesome! If you're a fan of James M. Cain et al., it may thrill you to learn that they weren't doing much that hadn't already been done in 1860s France. This was my first Zola, and I have no idea what I expected but this wasn't it.
I love old-school hardboiled crime fiction and film noir more than most other things, but somehow it had escaped me that there was a much older-school, pre-film version of that stuff, in which a dark, seedy Parisian arcade and its desperate denizens out-urban-anomied many of the next century's finest offerings. All the stuff I love in those novels and films (not to mention comics) is here: aforementioned bleak atmospheric setting, lustful lovers inspired to kill, the insanity of remorse and growing trapped hatred that follows.My favorite part of the book was the beginning; it did get pretty repetitive later on, and a bit draggingly moralistic, but even then it was a grand old time and enjoyable from beginning to end. This is one of the pulpiest, most gratuitously violent and disturbing and sordid books I've read in awhile, but because it's old you get to look fancy while you read it - unless you've got it on an iPad, in which case inquisitive members of the public will not be able to admire your high falutin' nineteenth-century French literature tastes. Personally, I'd recommend the paper version, available right now on Abe for around three bucks, if you're a crusty old Luddite type and/or you'd like to show off.
It seems Therese Raquin is a Naturalist novel, which is a catagory of Realism. What does all of that mean? Really, I don't have a clue. My guess is because it's about common, everyday, run-of-the-mill folks, living their boring, mundane lives in their boring, mundane city (Paris), and not being on their best behavior; acting more like animals than human beings.I can't fault Therese much for what she did, up until she and her lover Laurent killed her husband Camille. She was raised by her aunt, It seems Therese Raquin is a Naturalist novel, which is a catagory of Realism. What does all of that mean?
Really, I don't have a clue. My guess is because it's about common, everyday, run-of-the-mill folks, living their boring, mundane lives in their boring, mundane city (Paris), and not being on their best behavior; acting more like animals than human beings.I can't fault Therese much for what she did, up until she and her lover Laurent killed her husband Camille. She was raised by her aunt, living with her and her sickly son Camille, Therese's 1st cousin.
Her aunt had them marry when they came of age and Therese quickly grew tired of her loveless marriage to her lifeless husband. When Camille's friend Laurent started coming around, it didn't take long for their passionate love affair to start.
Therese Raquin Imdb
They decide to murder Camille so they can openly and freely enjoy their love making, maybe even marry. What they didn't count on was the overwhelming guilt they would feel, to the point of imagining Camille's rotting body lying between them in bed. That's Zola for you, he doesn't spare the rod when it comes to his characters.On a side note, I just discovered that a new production of Therese Raquin will open on Broadway in the fall of 2015, and Keira Knightly will play the lead role, her first on Broadway.
This was a very dark little gothic novel. It is not an easy story to describe- it is not a ghost story, but there is a haunting.
It is definitely not a vampire story, but one of the movie adaptations did include a vampire movie (Thirst, directed by Park Chan-wook; South Korea, 2009- an excellent movie, by the way!). There are many classic horror tropes: deep shadows where no light penetrates, walls that ooze damp, feelings of vague terrors and inexpressable dread, but it is not a horror story. This was a very dark little gothic novel. It is not an easy story to describe- it is not a ghost story, but there is a haunting. It is definitely not a vampire story, but one of the movie adaptations did include a vampire movie (Thirst, directed by Park Chan-wook; South Korea, 2009- an excellent movie, by the way!). There are many classic horror tropes: deep shadows where no light penetrates, walls that ooze damp, feelings of vague terrors and inexpressable dread, but it is not a horror story. Zola referred to the story as 'a psychological study'; it is definitely that.
Although it was written in 1867, I did not think it had the same kind of dated feel that many classics have. I enjoyed it very much: it was not at all what I had expected.
You know how it is. Your mother marries you to your sexless cousin and in silent defiance you enter a torrid affair with a peasant painter. All those hours spent humouring the dull man in your dreary shop, waiting for your next animalistic tussle with your fiery lover. Then one day, you realise the conventions of early 19thC society are going to prevent you from ditching the boring old blood tie, and you will never be free to give yourself to true love.God, the boredom!
I mean, you can’t even knit properly, can you? That last cardigan was missing an armhole and wasn’t even big enough for my nephew!
So what do you have to live for? You are, after all, a docile little mouse brimming with despair and desperation whose only chance at happiness lies in the arms of a bone-idle gadabout who only wanted a quick shag anyway. Perhaps if he bumped off your other half, made it look like an accident?Oh now you’ve gone and done it.
Didn’t I warn you watching your husband drown would come back to haunt you? How do you expect to look your mother in the eye ever again, you dozy bint? I suppose it’ll have to be several years of mental torment, depression and unrelenting misery, followed by a teary confession to your paralysed mother, until someone finally pours you a cup of poison and ends your sorry lot once and for all.Hold out, there’s hope. But not in this book. You don't need another Coca ColaOr the latest Francis Ford CoppolaYou don't need a holiday in AngolaYou need this novel by Emile ZolaIt's raw like a bad case of ebolaIt's atomic like gay enolaNot pretty like a gladiolaOr sweet like a tune from a old victrolaHe told the truth like the AyatollahHe was revolutionary like HizbollahHe never needed no payolaHe didn't have a MotorolaHe wrote the truth, he was Emile ZolaLike a panel he was solarNineteenth century rock and rollerHe put Balzac back in his baby strollerAnd this ain't no litcrit hyperbola.