%%id:160%% %%start:review%% ## Review Thérèse Raquin is the name of Emile Zola's novel, released in 1867, entitled with the main character name. I never read any other Zola's book yet, but this one marked me. I decided to read this book because it was the slimest book from a collection of great french authors I herited from my aunt 😅. I was also curious about Zola's writing style of course, mostly because I always heard about [Germinal](Germinal%20-%20Emile%20Zola.md) being one of the most important (and difficult) book in the french litterature from the XIXth century. What I can say is that I wasn't disapointed at all. 🤯 The first thing that sparks my curiosity, is that the book's 2nd edition preface was written by Zola himself. Given that's uncommun, it wasn't the most curious thing. In his preface, he's madly talking about how bad this book was received by the critics, and that he don't understand why so many people boycotted it. Critics used very tough words to describe it like* "disgusting", "brutal", "junky", "smelly", "disgusting", "putrid", "immoral", "scandalous"*. Zola's preface is more an answer to those critics than a real preface. He briefly talks about why and how he wrote this book. > I wanted to study temperaments, not characters. Here's the entire book. I chose characters sovereignly dominated by their nerves and their blood, devoid of free will, carried away in every act of their life by the fatalities of their flesh. This is how it starts and it's already a slap! I couldn't be more curious about what this book was about. The story is leaded by 4 main characters : - Thérèse Raquin, a young orphaned women, maried with Camille - Camille Raquin, Thérèse husband and first cousin - Madame Raquin, Camille's mother and Thérèse's aunt. She works as a shopkeeper to support the family - Laurent LeClaire, childhood friend and coworker of Camille who seduces Thérèse Zola describe Thérèse as unhappy in her mariage (forced mariages was common thing back in the days) and Camille as an eternal sick guy, skinny and a very pale skin. Madame Raquin is described as a very tough woman, harshing Thérèse all the time. The family decide to move to Paris and start a sewing service shop near the [Pont Neuf](Bridges.md). By walking in the street, Camille and Thérèse would meet an old friend of them, Laurent LeClaire. Laurent is described as an handsome man : tall, strong, very good looking. Thérèse would step by step would fall in love with Laurent and would start a turbulent, secret and passionnate affair with him. At that time, divorce and adultery was seen as a big dishonnor. As they're searching solutions so they could live their love affair more quietly, the idea of murdering Camille arise. Commiting a crime appear to them the only way to live their relationship freely. The whole book is about how the couple will live haunted by culpability, experiencing regular hallucinations and nightmare of Camille's dead corpse. It's amazing how Zola let you assist to how the worst human behavior born and live through love. The book only resolve at the very end, making it weirder and weirder as the story progress. What really struck me with this book, is how well the emotions are transmitted to the reader. It was absolutely different than other basic novel about love or anything like this. Among that transmission, it's also how various and how complex those emotions were described that make this book so intense to me. Especialy the weight of culpability, remords and awkwardness. Zola is really pushing these to the limit of what you can think when it goes to these feelings. This is what make this book so unique : how complex feelings could be pushed so far. ## About Zola's writing A thing that I noticed quickly about Zola's writing, it's that he really master the descriptions. He have this ability to let you visualize quickly and with a great accuracy how a character is looking and his/her personality with both good and bad traits. He don't hesitate to use hard words to describe people and like to emphasize some behavior, wether they're bad or good. Where Balzac, i.e, could take two entire pages of narrow details about a thing -like the color and texture of an insignificant door, how it's opening, how it's closing when just describing the house could have been sufficient...-, Zola is more straight to the point, but not less poetic and accurate. He let you quickly understand the essence of what he want's you to visualize and make you feel extremely varied feelings. %%end:review%% --- _The following was auto-generated by [Books and Binders](Books%20and%20Binders.md) and relates to the copy I own_ ## Thérèse Raquin This book from émile Zola was edited by Rencontre Lausanne and released 03/1968. I had it for 0.0€ from Hélène Drago. I read the 265 pages. ## More on this book : - Buying date : 23/04/2016 - Buying condition : donation - Actual condition : very_good - Book type : physical - Binding : hardcover - Language : French - Category : Novel XIXth - ISBN : - Weight in grams : 322