Reviews

The Masterpiece by Émile Zola

renesinas's review

challenging slow-paced

3.0

regina_phalange13's review against another edition

dark emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

beatrice_apetrei's review

5.0

This really is a masterpiece!

aliceboule's review

4.0

Although Claude was certainly tragic, it was Christine who really held my interest. Her story was so deeply sad because, while Claude struggles with his masterpiece, Christine's masterpiece is Claude himself. The idea that someone could be another person's work of art is as moving as it is troubling.

kiri_johnston's review against another edition

emotional reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

blynai's review against another edition

emotional sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

It shows a tragic story of a genius mind of an artist and the way it eats him whole from within. The story itself is interesting, but the overly exaggerated descriptions of EVERYTHING are making the reading experience dreadful

willablue's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

nnjack68's review against another edition

reflective sad

3.75

d_audy's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

One of Zola's masterpieces about art, the woes and doubts surrounding creation and about the Rougon-Macquart cycle itself -, a kind of dialogue with himself, his more confident, idealistic side projected into the successful writer Sandoz, and his darker, pessimistic self, riddled by doubts about the value of his own work, terrified that the various pieces of his garden work don't fit together or that he doesn't have the talent to bring to life the grand tapestry of reality personified by the failing painter Claude Lantier.    For a long time this was interpreted as a portrait of Zola and his friend Cézanne based on an hypothesis that the novel was the cause of their falling out, though recent scholarship and a found letter have destroyed that thesis, making the scholars return to Zola's own notes that the two characters are sides of himself.   The novel also features brilliant images of Zola's own doubts that progress and enlightened modernity he hoped would bring happiness to humanity might instead first throw it back into horrific darkness, a presage of the ill turn the early 20th century would turn.

melineegout's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0