Getting to know Emile Zola

When you're a highschool student in France, chances are high for you to get to read at least one of those boring "cobblestones" book, ie a 500 pages classic, usually written by Victor Hugo or Emile Zola. Even though I'm a bookworm, I never, ever, liked being forced to read a book, no matter the subject. So, when at 15, I had to read Zola's La Curée, I can't stay I was pleased about it. However, as I flicked through the pages, something strange happened. Although very reluctant about knowing about the disastrous adventures of that poor stupid Renée girl, I became bewitched with the kind of writing used by Zola. I suppose I fell in love with his depictions, and the addiction I developped to his masterpieces never left me ever since. Renée Saccard, the main character of this second volume of the Rougon-Macquart series (22 volumes, one day I'll blog about them all), is a sort of Emma Bovary. She's rich and beautiful, but isn't satisfied with her marriage to an old man. She cheats on him with his son (oh, I might have uncovered the plot, but Zola's novel's construction is always the same in every book. The rise and fall of a hero or a heroin). After having risen to the highest spheres in Paris, the poor woman experiences real despair and loses everything. But to me, Zola's novels are not about the plot. As I said, once you've read one of them, you can easily guess the end of all the others. What's really interesting, and addictive, are the depictions he makes of the environment he chose for his novels. May it be popular Paris or a quiet countryside town, may it be poor or rich, Zola depicts it in a way that takes you immediately in the middle of the nineteenth century, in a factory, in a palace, in the street or in a shop. You can sense through the pages the life of the members of the Rougon-Macquart family. You can feel for them, and understand their weaknesses and strenghts, knowing they inherited it all from the founder of the dynasty.

To this day, I'm still saving two volumes out of the 22, in order to always have a Rougon-Macquart novel to look forward to read. Would you be interested to read further informations about this book, I invite you to read my old bookworm website, which I haven't updated for the last 8 years or so, under the letter "C".