Reviews 

Contemporary with 'Thérèse Raquin', this is not that interesting. Set in French 19th century bourgeois society, a story of a rather dull...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Zola’s first published novel, a bildungsroman about a young man who shares a garret in Paris with a working girl, and cannot decide...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

The first in the huge cycle of novels about this family and their antecedents. Thematically, this is the end of republicanism and...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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....