 | By: Roger Pearson Emile Zola Binding: Paperback Publisher: Penguin Classics ISBN: 0140447423 ISBN-13: 9780140447422 Released: 29 Jan 2004 RRP: Average Rating:  |
The plot is quite simple & yet quite complex - Etienne (Stephen) Lantier is a character from the Rougon-Macquart family followed in the series' other books - particularly "L'Assomoir", which is a paralllel book, "Nana", which follows the fortunes of his sister, & "La Bete Humaine", which is about his brother. After losing his job in Lille he travels to the mining district nearby in search of work, & fallls in with the Maheu family. Fomenting a strike from the embers of an ongoing dispute, Lantier rouses the miners against the bourgeoisie, who, in Zola's characteristicallly even-handed style, also have their own point of view. To go any further into the plot would be to spoil a good story.
OK, so I read it in the Penguin translation rather than the original (I'd like to try though since I can read French better than I can speak, understand it spoken or write it), but a good translation should get underneath the skin of the author & bring the milieu alive, not only staying faithful to the original but evoking for English readers the sticky, grimy world of Montsou & Le Voreux. I am reading it in Polish translation as well, to see how it reads in a language which is better at capturing magic & mystery rather than the down-to-earth grittiness of English. This edition was also published under the Soviet regime as a piece of "socialist realism" - though Zola would have turned in his grave at some of the smalll ...changes... that translation has made to some of the incidents.
Great literature should be worth reading for the plot as well as for the language, & Zola succeeds on both counts, taking up the baton from Balzac & Hugo & pushing on towards the modernist literature of Orwell, Sartre & Huxley. Dostoyevsky created the same sort of racy stories in Russia, & both "Crime & Punishment" & "Germinal" are masterpieces of storytelling that don't waste as much time on philosophical rambling as Tolstoy did in "Anna Karenina", in which the plot got lost among a lot of padding.
Although a great period piece, I have seen Zola's stories adapted into other times & places such as wartime London & the Home Counties, & the failed strike could be seen as prophesising the upheavals in recent British politics, with the rise & falll of the fortunes of the Conservative Party as they try to unseat Labour from power. Good literature is always timeless & "Germinal" is one of the books I would recommend to any aspiring politician of any colour, on how to run an effective campaign - or not as the case might be.
This book had a major impact on me when I read it as a teenager - a Realist novel read in my own time to contrast with the Romantic works of Flaubert which I was dealing with for A level. I then returned to it at University - but importantly have subsequently re-read it more than once for pleasure as well as confidently giving it as a present to friends with a ""great read" recommendation.
It is hard to believe that society has changed so much & that we are so ignorant of the massive poverty & social injustice which existed relatively recently in Europe. This epic novel, as with many of Zola's novels, takes you into the startling detail of life in industrial France - with wonderful characterisation, reallly moving human stories & exciting & distressing plot .
It reallly has everything - & it may well change your outlook on life . I wholeheartedly recommend this as one of the greats
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