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Jan 15, 20211 min read
842. Émile Zola - Madeleine Ferat
Contemporary with 'Thérèse Raquin', this is not that interesting. Set in French 19th century bourgeois society, a story of a rather dull...
Dec 24, 20201 min read
837. Émile Zola - Thérèse Raquin
I am reading these in chronological order as I find the complete works pretty un-navigable on my kindle. I have read this before, but...
Dec 19, 20201 min read
835. Emile Zola - The Mysteries Of Marseilles
No. 3 in my unnavigable Complete works. If I was writing a critical summary of Zola’s novels, I would say that this is a much longer...
Dec 13, 20201 min read
834. Emile Zola - The Dead Woman's Wish
I think 833 is the first book; this is the 2nd. Much more plot and characterisation, a dying woman entrusts her adopted son to care for...
Dec 12, 20201 min read
833. Emile Zola - Claude's Confession
I read this as a not very good Bildungsroman. About a young Provencal man who has come to Paris and ends up living in pretty abject...
Jun 15, 20161 min read
314. Émile Zola - Claude's Confession
Zola’s first published novel, a bildungsroman about a young man who shares a garret in Paris with a working girl, and cannot decide...
Nov 27, 20151 min read
357. Émile Zola - Nana
Didn’t plan to read another Zola, but finished no.356 unexpectedly in bed and needed something else to read. Zola is a terribly prolix...
Nov 20, 20151 min read
356. Émile Zola - L'Assommoir
This is a very grim book, in the vein of 'La Terre', but set amongst the Parisian working class. The central figure is Gervaise, who has...
Jul 24, 20151 min read
322. Émile Zola - La Faute De L'Abbé Mouret
I didn’t read it in French, but don’t like the English translation (‘Abbe Mouret’s Transgression’ which misses half of the point) in my...
Jul 14, 20151 min read
321. Émile Zola - The Conquest Of Plassans
Plassans is the village where no.315 takes place, so we have moved back from Paris to Provence. A priest is taken in as lodger by a...
Jul 3, 20151 min read
319. Émile Zola - The Fat And The Thin
Zola’s books can be hard work. This is no.3 in the Rougon series; another completely different set of characters. This is set in the...
Jun 18, 20151 min read
316. Émile Zola - The Kill
This is no.2 in the series and is quite extraordinary. Aristide, an ineffectual and vacillating son of Pierre in no.315 above, has moved...
Jun 17, 20151 min read
315. Émile Zola - The Fortune Of The Rougons
The first in the huge cycle of novels about this family and their antecedents. Thematically, this is the end of republicanism and...
May 31, 20151 min read
307. Émile Zola - A Love Episode
I wouldn’t have chosen this, but it is very difficult to navigate a Complete Works on a kindle. This is an odd book, about a widow with a...
Jan 10, 20151 min read
276. Émile Zola - Thérèse Raquin
I enjoyed 'Germinal' hugely and 'La Terre' quite a lot, but this, at best was like an early Shakespeare if you had started with say 'King...
Dec 28, 20141 min read
272. Émile Zola - Earth
The only other Zola book in the house, although I have since invested something like £1.69 in Amazon to buy the complete works for my...
Dec 22, 20141 min read
271. Émile Zola - Germinal
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...
Aug 2, 20141 min read
231. Anne Zouroudi - The Messenger Of Athens
The author was recommended to Paddy by her friend Rod Lee. A detective series set in modern Greece; well this one on a tiny island....