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awashinfeeling 's review for:
Thérèse Raquin
by Émile Zola
Reading Zola's Thérèse Raquin took me right back to when I was 17 and had to read extracts from Germinal. I hated Zola back then. I'm not sure how I'd feel about Germinal 7 years later.
What I know now, however, is that I enjoyed Thérèse Raquin.
What always strikes me about his work is the frantic attention to detail. I read that Zola seems to write like he's "writing with a meat ax," which is truly the best and most accurate description of his style I've ever read. This novel gave me nightmares. It was a lot more disturbing than I expected it to be. Zola has no issues with minutely describing corpses and he does it in his typically clinical, scientific way. I'm not sure which is more terrifying, what he describes or how he describes it. But, yes, it's nightmare material. Take it as a gentle warning. I know why they didn't make us read Thérèse Raquin when I was 17. French literature would have become even more of a terrifying experience than it already was.
I was also not surprised when the Introduction revealed that Zola was inspired by Gustave Flaubert's infamous Madame Bovary. Sometimes it was so crudely obvious that I actually thought for a few seconds I was reading Flaubert. Weird but great.
There were a couple of things that annoyed me but I wasn't sure if I could be mad at our dear friend Emile for them. Linking Thérèse's animalistic, savage nature to her African blood... Yes, I know. That's what Naturalism does but it is annoying and it is terrible. Also, the wife-beating... Ugh. And the name calling. Lauren't blaming Thérèse for everything. I almost wanted to call the National Domestic Violence Helpline for Thérèse. For me, Thérèse was just another "madwoman in the attic". But even Laurent having violent, murderous tendencies because he's from a peasant family was disturbing. I guess I forgave Zola for being Zola in the end and I decided to look away.
A great read.
What I know now, however, is that I enjoyed Thérèse Raquin.
What always strikes me about his work is the frantic attention to detail. I read that Zola seems to write like he's "writing with a meat ax," which is truly the best and most accurate description of his style I've ever read. This novel gave me nightmares. It was a lot more disturbing than I expected it to be. Zola has no issues with minutely describing corpses and he does it in his typically clinical, scientific way. I'm not sure which is more terrifying, what he describes or how he describes it. But, yes, it's nightmare material. Take it as a gentle warning. I know why they didn't make us read Thérèse Raquin when I was 17. French literature would have become even more of a terrifying experience than it already was.
I was also not surprised when the Introduction revealed that Zola was inspired by Gustave Flaubert's infamous Madame Bovary. Sometimes it was so crudely obvious that I actually thought for a few seconds I was reading Flaubert. Weird but great.
There were a couple of things that annoyed me but I wasn't sure if I could be mad at our dear friend Emile for them. Linking Thérèse's animalistic, savage nature to her African blood... Yes, I know. That's what Naturalism does but it is annoying and it is terrible. Also, the wife-beating... Ugh. And the name calling. Lauren't blaming Thérèse for everything. I almost wanted to call the National Domestic Violence Helpline for Thérèse. For me, Thérèse was just another "madwoman in the attic". But even Laurent having violent, murderous tendencies because he's from a peasant family was disturbing. I guess I forgave Zola for being Zola in the end and I decided to look away.
A great read.