biorg 's review for:

The Belly of Paris by Émile Zola

3.0

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7o% food descriptions, 30% plot (if that). there is a moment in the second half where some violence occurs, and i thought that we can finally get the story going.... only for zola to pivot back to obssessively detailed food descriptions. zola was such a troll for that lol. not for the first time i note that zola's realism (or naturalism, if you wish) to take grotesque and supernatural forms. each character introduction is prefaced with the way they mimic the food they sell, which get old at some point. if i were to describe the novel in one word, it would be 'flesh'