Germinal (Oxford World's Classics)

I love this book. I read it over twenty years ago but the closing chapters, set in the mine, will never leave me. It is brilliant. One of my all time top novels.

One of the best books ever written (7/7 people found this helpful)

I first read this when I was about 12 years old (in an English translation, I hasten to add) as I had run out of reading matter and came across this book in my grandfather's study.

I am now 62 years of age, but have never forgotten the initial impact this made on me. Somehow Zola's writing is so descriptive and evocative that one feels that one is really there in the suffering and squalor along with the characters. The suffering and social deprivation of those times is quite unbelievable as we look back over 150 years.

I do not know who translated that edition but I have read it in the original French since, where it is even more
moving.

If you haven't read it, please do, you'll be glad you did and, as someone else wrote in review, it could even change your life or, at the very least give you much pause for thought.

Strike another match... (10/10 people found this helpful)

I read this (for pure pleasure) during my A-Levels and it was so literally unputdownable that I got told off countless times for reading it under the desk while I should have been concentrating on my Maths and Chemistry exam study. I think I ended up in tears with the school counsellor after I finished it. That's what a good book should do to even the most harded cynic.

The plot is quite simple and 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 parallel book, "Nana", which follows the fortunes of his sister, and "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, and falls 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 characteristically 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 and bring the milieu alive, not only staying faithful to the original but evoking for English readers the sticky, grimy world of Montsou and 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 and 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 small ...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, and Zola succeeds on both counts, taking up the baton from Balzac and Hugo and pushing on towards the modernist literature of Orwell, Sartre and Huxley. Dostoyevsky created the same sort of racy stories in Russia, and both "Crime and Punishment" and "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 and places such as wartime London and the Home Counties, and the failed strike could be seen as prophesising the upheavals in recent British politics, with the rise and fall of the fortunes of the Conservative Party as they try to unseat Labour from power. Good literature is always timeless and "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.

Mandatory reading and socially harrowing (11/12 people found this helpful)

Some classic novels are worthy but a chore; others are great to study academically; fewer combine adept social commentary with genius literary ability and a compelling plot.

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 and that we are so ignorant of the massive poverty and 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, really moving human stories and exciting & distressing plot .

It really has everything - and it may well change your outlook on life . I wholeheartedly recommend this as one of the greats

An emotional rollercoaster (7/8 people found this helpful)

This is the 5th novel by Zola I have read and the best yet. The novel takes you on an emotional rollercoaster as you accompany the Maheu family through their bitter struggle to survive life in a French mining village. Their lot is a terrible one but Zola paints a picture of real people who feel love, jealousy, desire, greed and pride and whom you care about. Their animal existence is shocking and as usual Zola paints a vivid picture of their surroundings which draws you in completely. The novel contains many strands and Zola also scrutinises the lives of the masters who seem immune to the suffering of their workers and whose families cause them the same grief and strife as the miners whom they consider to be a different species. Its a dramatic novel which is beautifully written and most importantly its a storyline that will have you on the edge of your seat.

Germinal (Oxford World's Classics)

Emile Zola

Reader Reviews:

I don't believe I'll read a better book (0/0 people found this helpful)

One of the best books ever written (7/7 people found this helpful)

Strike another match... (10/10 people found this helpful)

Mandatory reading and socially harrowing (11/12 people found this helpful)

An emotional rollercoaster (7/8 people found this helpful)

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