A review by carosbcher
Lourdes by Émile Zola

4.0

We accompany a priest and a sick young girl on a pilgrimage to Lourdes, five days on 649 pages. So that already might tell you that it's not a fast paced read, but we get to know so many details of what's happening to the people hoping for being healed by drinking the water from Lourdes, what's happening to the believers and to those who don't believe in religion anymore, what's happening to Lourdes and its citizens. Zola's picture of the society he analyzes in this book is a pessimistic, sad and dark one and can get an apocalyptic touch when you imagine thousands of sick people wandering through the city. Religion gets its share of beating, too.

It's not an optimistic book, at all, it's soaked with unhappiness, but it's beautiful in its own way, too, and definitely worth reading if you like works of critical realism in a historic atmosphere.