A review by emmkayt
Thérèse Raquin by Émile Zola

4.0

Zola was a bit pretentious and self-deceiving in defending this novel against its critics. Granted, they were over the top in calling it pornography (though gosh, it’s pretty sexy for the 1860s), but in his introduction to the second edition, Zola sententiously declares that his intentions were purely scientific, that “I simply applied to two living bodies [the main character and her lover] the analytical method that surgeons apply to corpses.” So it came as a surprise to find that his tale of adultery gone awry - totally new and scientific twist, right? - piles on the Gothic foreboding and peculiar theorizing about temperaments (nervous/feminine, sanguine/male). Had he been more scientific it might not have been as weird and fun a story, however.