Possibly the best book I have read this year.
Zola completely turns 19th century fiction on its head and writes a book in which the (real) poor are the central figures and are really strongly characterised. The middle class characters who are there are gently satirised, despite their appallingly complacent behaviour against the suffering of the workers.
The book is really about coal mining in 19th century Northern France, which leads to a dreadful strike and poverty and ends with the destruction of the mine by an anarchist called Souverein, who is otherwise a minor character.
The hero is Etienne Lantier, who turns up out of work, leads the miners into the strike and in many cases their death and leaves at the end, disillusioned but heading for Paris hoping to meet up with the International.
But possibly the real heroes are the large Maheu family with whom Etienne lodges initially. Most of whom are dead by the end including their daughter and his lover Catherine, although she is loyal to a pretty unpleasant rival and they never fuck until right at the end of the book just before she drowns in the flooded mine.
Zola writes very well and openly about sex of which there is lots but it is never prurient. It is also a book about the beginnings and failure of socialism in the 19th century and its ultimate destruction by the forces of the state and capitalism. Brilliant.
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