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A review by craiggle99
L'Assommoir by Émile Zola
5.0
Ah, Paris!
City of Lights, City of Squalor... at least for some in the 19th century.
L'Assomomoir follows the adult life of Gervaise Macquart as she traverses several periods of fortune and failure in 1870's Paris.
From being a young bride (first child at 14) to her employment in a Parisian laundry and second marriage, the arc of the novel follows that that of the working poor at that period in the history of France and of the city.
One feels for the triumphs and failures of Gervaise and her family and intimate associates as they traverse their lives in the squalor of the region of the city in which they live and work... eking out boom and bust to support themselves, rejoice in pleasure and decline into destitute poverty.
In this edition, translated by Margaret Mauldon including notes on the text and with a forward by Robert Lethbridge reviewing that text and the surrounding socio-political atmosphere in which the novel was set and which influenced its construction by Zola, I feel one gets a sense of the environment facing the central characters at that point in the history of the Third Republic and the changes and upheavals that were occurring in the 19th century.
I have read a few novels by English authors from that time, but reading this has spurred me to seek out other novels of that period... from France (Victor Hugo) as well as other regions (Russia, other English novelists, other regions of Europe).
City of Lights, City of Squalor... at least for some in the 19th century.
L'Assomomoir follows the adult life of Gervaise Macquart as she traverses several periods of fortune and failure in 1870's Paris.
From being a young bride (first child at 14) to her employment in a Parisian laundry and second marriage, the arc of the novel follows that that of the working poor at that period in the history of France and of the city.
One feels for the triumphs and failures of Gervaise and her family and intimate associates as they traverse their lives in the squalor of the region of the city in which they live and work... eking out boom and bust to support themselves, rejoice in pleasure and decline into destitute poverty.
In this edition, translated by Margaret Mauldon including notes on the text and with a forward by Robert Lethbridge reviewing that text and the surrounding socio-political atmosphere in which the novel was set and which influenced its construction by Zola, I feel one gets a sense of the environment facing the central characters at that point in the history of the Third Republic and the changes and upheavals that were occurring in the 19th century.
I have read a few novels by English authors from that time, but reading this has spurred me to seek out other novels of that period... from France (Victor Hugo) as well as other regions (Russia, other English novelists, other regions of Europe).