Germinal (Penguin Classics)

As a native French speaker and having read Emile Zola in my teens (some years ago..) I am very disappointed to see words spelled without the accents! Not nice to read like this. Please, please correct this also for those who are learning French. I have always loved Emile Zola's books and wish to reread them but this makes it hard.

Most Americans remember Èmile Zola, if they knew of him at all, from his involvement in the Dreyfus Affair; in Europe, however, he is remembered as the celebrated author of Germinal. Flaubert & Zola are generally credited with creating the "realist" school of literature in France. Indeed, Zola viewed his literary output in grand terms. He created a series of novels chronicling the vicissitudes of the Rougon-Macquart family, each novel depicting a different dimension of French life under the anemic dictatorship of Napoleon the Little. Germinal is the 13th installment in that ambitious series. Germinal has been hailed as Zola's dedicated song to the working man's struggles. That this novel deserves this renown is debatable; though material hardship is in forefront throughout this story. The broad strokes of this story concern the horrific life of miners in nineteenth century France during the industrial revolution. This contemporary event is played up by Zola. The machines have gotten their revolution. The average working man has yet to achieve his. Zola castes periodic glances back to the French Revolution, when the first month of spring became Germinal, or the month of sprouting life. Zola clearly implied that the working man's revolution was mercilessly aborted after the bourgeoisie eventually claimed and solidified their triumphs. Zola's depiction of brioche & coco on a leisured morning for the mine manager's family starkly contrasts with the mine workers' rushed and family-public ablutions before a meager breakfast--one so wanting that it can hardly be considered a break of fast at all. Zola's realism(for his time) manifests itself in the psychological commentary he foists on his characters. The bourgeoisie imagine they are the benevolent benefactors of the poor. The poor imagine that they are lazy and in need of constant policing so they don't slip into wanton vice. Zola can actually border on being raunchy when portraying this slide, so be warned: This isn't Austen. That this moral policing is conducted usually by the workers themselves displays Zola's opinion that oppression cannot really exist adequately without substantial help from the oppressed. Capitalism may continuously squeeze its workers until they've reached incomes affording only the barest subsistence, yet these actions are generally viewed complacently as well as accepted by those exploited, albeit with an amount of socially permitted grumbling. Zola's adamance on this point is quite clear: this process of exploitation and impoverishment continues for generations, unless interrupted. Germinal is the story about such an interruption. A young man comes to the mining town looking for work as he's starving and has been terminated from his last employment as an engineer for fighting. He has a history of violence and alcohol abuse. He is an autodidact with big ideas, growing bigger with ever book he finishes. When the board of the mine he is working at decides to adjust its workers' pay against them, this newcomer interrupts the usual acquiescence by prompting the mine's workers to strike. The rest of this story revolves around how well this sorts out for those workers. This is a masterfully written story that will emotionally suck you in. Zola is a fair judge of classes, though by no means an unbiased one. I defy a reader not to feel some sympathy for these fictional miners. Yet, strangely, it's Zola's portrayal of animals in this story which threatens to break your heart. Horses used for brute labor deep down in the mine are represented by Bataille, the aged gentle creature of burden that can't remember sun or field so long has he pulled tubs of ore, and Trompette, the new, young addition fresh from the fields, cast into that bleak subterranean world, whom Baitaille befriends, but who sadly cannot last below. The tragedy between them as one who's unable to remember joy, the other unable to forget and let it go actually encapsulates the fate of all in Germinal. The old accept and mitigate; the young rebel and militate. Though the newcomer is the main socialist agitator of the story, Zola includes a Bakunin-like revolutionary more disturbing than anything you will find in Dostoevsky. Souvarine keeps to the edges of the novel until the end. He is cold, calculating, and in complete control, intellectually and physically. He is actually everything the newcomer is not. Souvarine's philosophy of total destruction is contrasted against his affection for a rabbit named Poland. This rabbit is tortured for no particular reason, then randomly served up as dinner to Savourine. Zola warns through these fictional scenes that more than character accounts for fate. The last abused animal in this novel is the human, of course, and Zola cannot go for long without returning the reader's attention to this point. All classes are affected by brutal violence, but mining serves as an especially horrific symbol for the barbarity of capitalism as it forces workers to decide to sell themselves back into the very earth from where they came and would eventually return to permanently. A reader can't escape the fact this is a bleak book; a reader also can't escape the fact this is an important book. The ending clearly renders Zola's judgement(at least for this novel) on the use of interruption as promising hope for acquiring social justice, and the continuances in life that tend to ignore it altogether. Tallying the end results in Germinal gives the reader pause until he remembers this wasn't Zola's final judgement on the subject. Dreyfus was.

Emile Zola's novel 'Germinal' is the first, to my knowledge, that addressed the topic of workers' unions and served as a forerunner to the great workers' rights novels of John Steinbeck, 'In Dubious Battle' and 'The Grapes of Wrath'. Zola had become s very popular and successful writer on the strength of his objective, journalistic treatment of social classes and occupations in mid-19th century France depicted though his series of 'Rougon-Macquart' novels, tracing members of two branches of a family throughout various strata of society.

Zola had been attacked often by those on the political Right for being tasteless and immoral and by the Left for depicting the working classes in such a negative light. His defense was that he was approaching all of these people from a scientific standpoint, seeing their depravity as symptomatic of their social conditions. He assured readers that he was planning a new working class novel and he intended to do extremely thorough research to ensure the new novel's authenticity and accuracy. He learned about miners' strikes in northern France and began his research by posing as the secretary to an activist and visited mines, speaking to individual workers and learning how the operations and machinery ran.

Although regarded as the thirteenth of his Rougon-Macquart novels, the only connection with the rest of the series is the fact that the main character, Etienne Lantier, is the son of the laundry woman Gervaise from 'L'Assommoir (The Drinking Den)' and the brother to the titular character of 'Nana'. A trained mechanic from Paris, he arrives at the mining village of Montsou with nothing and no previous mining experience but is taken in by a friendly family, the Maheus, whose patriarch is nicknamed Bonnemort because he has cheated death so many times in his 58 years and has survived numerous accidents. Bonnemort's son, Toussaint Maheu, has seven children along with his wife, referred to as La Maheude, as most miners' wives were considered accessories to their husbands. The children that are old enough (ten and up) also work in the mines as the more contributors to the household income the better the chance of survival. Etienne becomes infatuated with the fifteen year-old daughter Catherine, who works as relentlessly as any of the men. Unfortunately, Catherine is the mistress of another miner, the abusive, boasting Chaval, who instantly develops a jealousy for Etienne and Catherine, believing that she allows him sexual freedom with her due to their close proximity. The reality is that Etienne and Catherine are each held back from expressing their feelings due to an unspoken propriety.

Etienne soon becomes not only very efficient at his job, learning quickly, but gains the trust and good will of most of the workers except for Chaval. He also observes the brutal conditions of the work and the meager wages that barely enable the workers to live at a subsistence level. He has a previous connection with a socialist labor organizer from Paris and decides he wants to begin a labor strike. The catalyst for this decision occurs when the mining directors lower salaries to cover the loss of timber used for shoring up the underground walls. Etienne has little difficulty stirring up the workers' rage against this gross injustice that will result in certain starvation for many families. The Maheus in particular undergo more than their share of misfortunes when one son has to marry the daughter of a neighboring family after she presents him with two children that she claims are his, forcing him into the role of provider for another family and a younger son breaks both legs in a mining accident. After the beginning of the strike, Catherine alienates her family by moving in with Chaval and continuing to work with him at a neighboring mine. La Maheude has a suckling infant so she could not work even before the strike and another of the younger children dies of starvation.

Zola includes a large cast of characters, not only Etienne and the Maheu family but also Rasseneur, the former miner, now owner of the local tavern, Maigrat, the merchant who exchanges product for sexual favors from female miners and mothers of mining families. Then there is the engine man Souvarine, a Russian nihilist who, when he's not operating the engine, sits at Rasseneur's tavern stroking his pet rabbit (named Poland) and advocates the destruction of all social structures. The only solution to the injustices is to tear everything down, break down all institutions and possibly then a new world will be born.

On the management side of the equation are M. Gregoire, a major stockholder of the company, who claims to live a pious and simple life with his family and justifies his position by allowing his wife and daughter to give clothing and material to the women of the mine. He refuses to give money because he feels that it will only encourage them to yield to temptation and spend it on drinking and licentiousness. The company director M. Hennebeau is in the position of middle management, a fearful man that refuses to make any concessions to the strikers and whose feeling of helplessness is enhanced by his discovery that his wife has been conducting an affair with his nephew. The adulterous nephew, an engineer named Negrel, feels compassion for the miners and attempts to aid in a rescue attempt when a mine shaft collapses.

Zola personifies the mining shaft as a great devouring beast:
'For half n hour the shaft went on devouring in this fashion, with more or less greedy gulps, according to the depth of the level to which the men went down, but without stopping, always hungry, with its giant intestines capable of digesting a nation. It went on filling and still filling, and the darkness remained dead. The cage mounted from the void with the same voracious silence.'

This is a literal depiction of Hell, containing never ending darkness when the lamps die out and death by drowning, if the underground rivers break their dams, or a living burial if the landslips break their walls. It is literally back breaking as well as suffocating.

Although most of the characters are neither completely saintly or villainous (with the exception of the vile merchant Maigrat and the brutal miner Chaval), all of them are capable of both compassion and cruelty. Zola depicts the mind of the crowd as well as any author I've read, how righteous indignation of the individual can easily build the critical mass of the crowd and devolve into the rapacious, senseless violence and destruction of the mob. Etienne is the hero of the strikers until they only see unbending resistance and a prolongation of their suffering rather then the tangible results they expected.

Although the lives Zola describes are relentlessly grim and dire, the momentum of his storytelling carries the reader on an exhilarating tide of hopefulness that the strikers' efforts will ultimately not be in vain, despite minimal or nonexistent short-term gain. The just grievances of the miners are easily understandable but so is the reasoning of the director who feels that if he yields to their demands his operation will go bankrupt. All of these characters appear to be trapped into playing the roles in which they've been cast; they can only resist their circumstances to a limited extent.

While Zola published the novel in 1885, the setting of the novel is twenty years earlier. Cynically, one could see that there were striking miners in the 1860's and there were still striking miners in the 1880's. However, Zola is writing from the vantage point of hindsight, knowing that small concessions to progress had been made in the intervening years. For example, children under a certain age by the 1880's were exempt from work in the mines.

By the novel's conclusion, the strike is over and the miners return to work. It would seem that their effort was unsuccessful. Yet at the end of the novel, Etienne returns to Paris with a renewed commitment to the organizing of workers' unions and the cause of more humane conditions and living wages. Much like Tom Joad at the conclusion of 'The Grapes of Wrath', he will continue the fight in another setting and, implicitly in the
'germination' of the title, the fight will continue, if not by him then by another crusader. Like Tom Joad, Etienne will be there to give voice to the voiceless as new players in the fight spring to life.

My knowledge about Emile Zola had been limited to his letter, J'accuse, and his trial. Germinal was the first book I read and I just wish I had become familiar with his work much earlier.

One cannot really say that one enjoys Germinal, because the content is shows some really depressing aspects of life of human beings. And yet it was not easy to put the book down. This 1951 edition had an introduction by the translator, Havelock Ellis. Friends who have read a much later translation made the right decision, as in 1951 edition one missed a map, and some of the language would have meant a lot more to those with knowledge of the French language.

However, Germinal is a must for anyone who needs to begin to understand the awful conditions the miners lived in the second half of the nineteenth century, and how their lives contrasted with those of the bourgeoisie. Yet the book must help any reader get an understanding about historical and contemporary rebellions or struggles by people who are existing in awful circumstances. These people have the courage to try and fight, and even when they seem to be losing, they do not want to give up. Those of us who are fortunate enough to live in financial and material comfort are shown that a revolution, like the French Revolution, does not resolve all human problems.

But at the same time, human beings do not give up. In this respect Germinal is an appropriate title. It indicates spring in French, but it also suggests failure does not mean the end. The last sentence in the book is revealing:
"men were springing forth, a black avenging army, germinating slowly in the furrows, growing towards the harvests of the next century, and their germination would soon overturn the earth."

Zola is able to describe his characters very well, and at the same time, his perception of different human relationships, for example, linked to love, jealousy and so on is brilliant. In order to get the most out of the book, it needs to be studied, not just read.

** Some spoilers within **

An extremely intriguing story that moves along with several sub-plots - all of them well interconnected. The style is very social oriented - in this case exploring the lives of coal miners in the north of France. It resembles Dickens who was concerned with both social issues and class issues; but unlike Dickens, who was very puritanical; the sexual passages in "Germinal" are really quite forthright - for instance women have menstrual cycles.

Zola, I would say, is somewhere between Dickens and Orwell. There is a proletariat here - and it is not an idolized proletariat. They engage in sexual relations upon reaching puberty, and after that they beat their spouses. The depictions of starvation, of the work in coal mines, of the rallies of the workers - are all extremely poignant and stunning. This book is a page turner.

"Germinal" is more event driven than character driven. Sometimes the characters seem more like "types" - representing a socialist, an anarchist, a working class person... Zola makes the events derive a life of their own - like the strikes - which propels people in unexpected ways. This is very much true to life, where once a course is decided upon, predictions and theories go out the window.

In some ways women are cast as down-trodden and suitable only for sexual gratification and motherhood; but perhaps this is a reflection of the era. The lives of the women in this story are sordid - they have no hope of escaping the enslavement of raising several children on subsistence wages. The upper class women seem intent on acquiring power through the use of sex. Catherine, however, is probably the most complex character in the story - rivaling Etienne. At times Catherine has an aura of saintliness about her - we want her to break out of her cage and we sense her desire to do so. But in the end, she too becomes trapped.

This was the first time I have read a book of Zola and it was a very positive experience.

From the very start - with an icy wind blowing across a dark and desolate landscape - the author evokes a place with a story that is graphic and harrowing. Etienne Lantier arrives destitute at a mining pit at Montsou (which loosely means mountain of money) without any prospects but still with the energy of a youth. Stopping to find some warmth from the biting cold, he lingers long enough to find himself descending into the abyss of a coal mine. From that point he becomes entangled with the misfortunes of the Maheu family, who are caught in a vicious cycle of debt, hopelessly slaving away for starvation wages.

The events of the novel take place during the 1860s in France. The industrial revolution has commenced and a raw form of capitalism is the rule of the day - no needless government intrusion into the affairs of private industry. Children of a shockingly young age, about 10 years old, girls as well as boys, are sent down to work in the coal mines. Health and safety standards are set by the company; that is, by the local management, who are totally at the beck and call of a distant Board of Directors, who in turn are beholden to absent shareholders. Whenever an accident occurs, the company has nothing to prevent it from covering up whatever actually occurs. Labor is cheap and plentiful enough that given the choice of cutting the dividend when things get tough, the company will figure out a way to cheat the workers.

At this stage in history, industrial workers have only begun a desperate fight for their rights. The unfortunate part of it is that they have been so beaten down, so accustomed to being treated like cattle, that they tend to act accordingly. Outside of their labors, life is a constant obsession with food, drink, and sex. This habitual instinctual behavior and feeding of addictions not only degrades them but traps them all the more. The horse, Bataille, doomed to spend his life deep within the mine pit, is portrayed as showing about as much compassion and humanity as any of the miners. Etienne, the outsider without attachments, has hopes of galvanizing their better instincts by organizing a strike. But as the strike gains momentum, so does a sense of impending violence and tragedy. The miners have very little chance of getting significant concessions from the company, and though they doggedly struggle, their efforts to stave off starvation are costly. When they are pushed to the brink, horrible things happen.

Although this is a work of fiction, it is a valuable piece of history that contains lessons. It is clear that when there are only the most laissez-faire of laws - basically no government standards or oversight, the desperate and vulnerable get crushed by the rising tide of greed. Extreme conditions trigger extreme reactions, and all hell breaks loose.

Germinal, generally considered to be Zola's masterpiece, is a gripping novel set in the fictional French coal-mining town of Montsou during the 1860s. The inhabitants of Montsou are a resigned lot--resigned to their livelihood in spite of its dangers, resigned to their poverty, and resigned to the bestiality of their lives. Zola's frank descriptions of the promiscuity and vulgarity that attend day-to-day existence in Montsou are a key to establishing the gritty atmosphere maintained throughout. Into this milieu comes Étienne, a well-meaning, idealistic, but ultimately naïve young man just recently dismissed from his job on the railway. It is Étienne, with his elaborate theories of justice for the working man taken from his reading of leading socialist thinkers, who inspires the miners of Montsou to embark on a general strike.

Zola's vivid description of this prolonged work stoppage, and the increasing poverty, starvation, despair, and ultimately violence that attend it, is the centerpiece of the novel. As the chapters pass, Zola astonishes the reader with the overwhelming weight of despair that overtakes the lives of his characters. Their sufferings, undertaken in the cause of justice for themselves and their fellow miners, give them the zeal of martyrdom (a comparison Zola explicity makes on several occasions). It is a zeal which ultimately robs them of such humanity as had been left to them by the pre-existing conditions of their lives. Much like the idealism of the Revolution descending into the bloodletting of the Terror, the strikers, initially demanding only justice, end as murderous thugs. Étienne finds himself divided between being caught up in their zeal and being horrified by what he has helped to create, and the "oppressors"--the bourgeois managers and their families--gain the reader's sympathies.

The novel is ultimately ambivalent about the "great cause" of socialism. Étienne himself, as noted before, is basically a naïve dilettante, but he is also a man of decidedly mixed motives--he has visions of himself escaping the anonymity of working-class existence and finding fame, and even material fortune, as an orator and champion of the cause. He is contrasted throughout the novel with Souvarine, an engineer of anarchist convictions. While Étienne is a true believer in the utopian dream, Souvarine is a nihilist who sees nothing but destruction and chaos as the harvest to come. The act of terrorism which sets in motion the novel's horrific climax is the working out of this nihilist vision.

The weaknesses of the novel are primarily the result of Zola's commitment to his highly theoretical view of human life. The novel illustrates his deterministic understanding of moral development: His characters are what their environment makes them (the debased and subhuman conditions of life in Montsou leading to the bestial behavior of the villagers), or what they are programmed to be by genetics (the animal lurking within Étienne due to his family history of alcoholism). The characters, while usually engaging as persons and well-drawn, occasionally become two-dimensional respresentations of Zola's theoretical preoccupations.

This book about strife and revolt in French mines in the 19th century is hard to rate. It is a slow, depressing read, but life in those horrendous conditions did come alive to me. It has a very authentic feel. Individual scenes are very powerful. For me, the problem is that I found it hard to keep many characters straight and so there were just a handful of characters I cared about. It also was too slow and repetitive, and I confess I skimmed much of the second half of this book. While I can see why so many praise this novel, it did not work as a whole for me. Still, I'm glad I waded into this novel. My three star rating is an average of how much I liked this (not much) and how impressive parts are (a lot).

This book is Zola's masterpiece about a coal miner strike in northeast France in the second half of the nineteenth century before the Franco-Prussian war. The title of the book, `Germinal', is explained in the introduction and has a double meaning. On the one hand, it refers to the month during the French revolution when the Parisians rose up in bloody rebellion against the government. The title therefore implies violent, bloody revolution. On the other hand, it also signifies cleansing and rebirth. These are the main themes of this book, and the title is quite appropriate. This book paints a clear, uncompromising picture of abject squalor and misery in which the coal miners worked during this era, and probably describes the conditions of miners in every Western country at the time. The miners live their lives as little more than animals or beasts of burden. Like most of Zola's work, the story is dark, and the miners' lot in life only gets worse as the story progress. If you are looking for an uplifting, feel good story, this ain't it. Zola's writing style is brutally and graphically realistic, he pulls no punches. This is a book about hope and struggle, failure and perserverance.

For those unfamiliar with Zola, he is regarded as one of the two greats in French literature (Hugo being the other), standing well above all other authors. He is certainly one of the greatest novelists ever to put pen to paper in any language. He is perhaps best known, however, for a newspaper article that he wrote entitled `J'accuse' (I accuse) in which he called much of the political and military leadership of France in the 1890s liars for their role in covering up the innocence of Alfred Dreyfus. The novel `Germinal' is one in a series of twenty books that Zola wrote (the Rougon-Macquart series) to describe various aspects of life in France under the Empire before it was destroyed by the Prussians in 1870. All the books are linked (ala Balzac), with many characters recurring throughout the series. For example, the main character in `Germinal', Etienne Lantier, is the son of the washerwoman Gervaise from `L'Assomoir', an earlier book in the series.

I cannot write a review to do this outstanding novel justice. The characters are realistic, three dimensional, well developed, and believable. Zola's dialogue is outstanding. He writes as people actually talk, I have never read anyone who writes dialogue as well as Zola. He writes about the human condition and all that is good and evil in men. The story is complex and well developed, yet easy to read. This translation is highly readable, and contains detailed endnotes that give the reader information on people, places, and historical events that contemporaries of Zola would have understood, but that modern readers may not be familiar with. I would, in general, recommend Zola's work to others with caution, but I highly recommend this book to anyone who is perusing these reviews. This is a great novel by a great writer - you will not be disappointed.

Others have already been more eloquent in their descriptions of this novel than I have time to transcribe here from my neural attic. I happened across this book at a church fair and had (somehow) heard of the name Zola. I have frequently traveled to France and after brief scan of some of the pages, noting the French names, decided to shell over the 50 cents for it. I started reading and was impressed by the deep descriptive abilities Zola had at his disposal; describing Etienne's initial perusal of the maw of the coal mine in the early hours of the morning with the inclusion of such descriptions as to how he shifted some of his arm held belongings from arm to arm under his elbow uncomforably. I was hooked and read the whole thing in less than 5 hours in one afternoon after setting aside the time due to the impressive beginning I espied that night at the church where the lovely rapture began.

As usual, the characters more than make the story. Each person is important! What a breath of fresh air. Most authors shrink at such a daunting task; but Zola performs the trick as though he loved each human in the world so much that set out to find out everything about them. The delicious social interactions are interspersed with the young man "coming to age" with his philosophical ideas actually being forced to germinate and yield fruit (hence the title). His germination is only one of many you see in the story; and not every plant that germinates lives to bear fruit. Or even if it does, it may rot on the vine; the ending is not important. The possibility of changing what is, for the betterment of many is the ever sought after and seemingly unreachable goal....

I highly recommend this book. Enjoy! You'll find yourself wishing you could meet the people in this book. :)

Simply put, I believe this is the greatest novel of all time. Yes, I'm a big Zola fan, but I don't give all of his books five stars. This is his greatest achievement, and it deserves a place in anyone's literary canon. The book describes the harsh life of coal miners in the (fictional?) mining town of Montsou in the north of France. Étienne Lantier (son of Gervaise in L'Assomoir) wanders into town looking for work. He gets a job in the mine and finds lodging with the Maheus, a family with seven children, whose daily life totally revolves around the mine. Étienne starts out as a passive Everyman character--we see this bleak world through his eyes. He then takes on a more active role in the lives of the miners by becoming a labor organizer and preaching socialist ideals. The miners decide to strike for better wages, which begins a chain of events leading to more suffering, sacrifice, and eventually violence. Zola beautifully examines the strike's effect on every person involved: the miners, the town shopkeepers, the mine executives, the small business owner, the government, the shareholders, the communist intellectuals, the soldiers, the radical revolutionaries. Zola's characteristic attention to detail creates a vivid world for the reader to inhabit. We become involved in these people's lives and fight their battles within ourselves. No stone goes unturned, and no one emerges from the conflict with clean hands. Zola definitely inspires us to sympathize with the miners, but at the same time he does not absolve them of all responsibility for their own suffering. Nor does he paint the mine owners as evil personified. Instead, he creates human characters we can empathize with, and provides us with the motivations for their actions. Even Étienne, our eyes and ears in the story, does not come out smelling like a rose. Though his visions of socialist utopia may be lofty, his vanity and his limited intellect cloud his judgment, and as a result people suffer. This is mostly a serious novel, but there are lighter moments and bits of social satire as well. The lives of the miners are not all sorrow and woe. At the beginning of the book we enjoy some of their happier moments. From there, tension slowly builds into a snowball effect that climaxes with a series of shocking tragedies. Through it all Zola imbues an underlying philosophical debate on the value of human life and dignity. I would recommend this book to anyone, whether they are habitual readers of classic literature or not. Those who read this book might also enjoy The Octopus by Frank Norris, an American writer who was greatly influenced by this book.

This was such a wonderful and engrossing story that I couldn't put it down and had to get through all 524 pages in two days. I already knew I loved Emile Zola from "The Dram Shop" and "Nana". But this certainly deserves to be hailed as his great masterpiece. I was so caught up in the plight of these miners that I couldn't tear myself away. It was very strange, I'd be doing something else but my mind would be on 19th Century miners in Northern France! How many girls are at the supermarket worrying about that?

Although the book takes place so long ago, it still has resonance and relevance today (which is shameful), and not just in the poorer countries, but within wealthy ones. I don't think wage poverty has ever been so powerfully depicted. The miners live enslaved in generational poverty, which results in undernourishment, disease, and the inability to cling to any dignity or self-respect.

Promiscuity, hunger, and suffering are evoked vividly for readers, and the wretchedness of the miners just increased our affection for them and we share all their emotions, which constantly change: resignation at a slavish, animal like existance; anger and fury at the wealthy, invisible shareholders who grow richer and richer at their lives of leisure while generations of children are fed to the mines to die early deaths and live wretched lives, and admiration that they manage to keep any familial affection amongst so much deprivation.

Zola does an incredible job of juxtaposing the self-indulgent lives of the financially well-off, who are content to let miners starve while they feel self-righteous about giving them paltry handouts while they live off what is essentially slave labor. It's pretty easy to see how the people would be caught up in a socialist fervor, and we feel the contempt the miners do at these useless leeches of society who look down their noses at people dying from dangerous fumes and unsafe working conditions, malnutrition and overwork.

The story centers around a fatal strike by the miners, lead by the young Etienne Lantier, son of Gervaise, the alcoholic from "The Dram Shop". It was truly horrifying and almost unbearable to read the way that the Company held their cruel and unwavering resolve to not give the miners a living wage in the face of so much grim suffering, and understandable that ultimately the miners become violent and depraved. For more than two months they have almost no food and some starve to death, and I as a reader was haunted as I remembered that although this book is "fiction", episodes just like these really happened.

I won't give away the details of who dies and who kills whom and who has an affair with whom, because the edition I had tells you in the introduction, and I really think it's better to find out while reading the novel and not have it given away. I will say there are many genuinely vivid, touching, evocative scenes, which despite their high drama are believable, in many cases based on actual events.

This is a great novel from an artistic standpoint, but I also think we would all do well to learn about these kinds of workers' struggles from a century and a half ago, because we still have a lot to learn from them in a world where the gap between rich and poor grows ever wider.

although slightly dated because of the progress that labor has made in most of the world, zola does a superb job of analyzing the problem from the workers perspective. By looking at generations of coal miners in the same family, he is able to reflect the changes each generation has gone through and where they appear to be going in the future. incorporated into this, is a comparison of the different theories of labor revolt from evolutionary to revolutionary to anarchy. the personal struggles of the labor leaders and their true ambitions are almost prescient as to what they are today.

intermixed in this interesting political analysis is a very interesting story of this family and what happens to them. the end is a page turner with very interesting twists.

the one place where it lacks is from the perspective of the business owner. the story is clearly onesided. i'm sure he meant it to be that way.

story is similar to grapes of wrath by steinbeck. the difference is that in steinbeck, i see the story as an affirmation of what makes america great. yes, the migrants were abused and the thirties were a time that demanded the unionization of workers for protection. however, it also shows the determination of the american family to work hard to succeed; take risks for opportunity; and never give up. just look at california today to see what happened to all these migrants. in zola's germinal the family unit is not strong and the future is just another generation going into the mines. their only hope is social change. but that is a whole new discussion.

this book, however, is a better book than steinbeck's in that it is a more complex study of the political side, better written, and has a better storyline.

Entire families down in the coal mine and they're still hungry.

One can see how a classic like this, with its uninhibited sex, graphic violence, and communist tone, wouldn't fit in a lot of American classrooms.

*Germinal* should be required reading for Union bosses or anyone on either side of a potential workers' strike, which I now better understand should be used an absolutely last resort or nothing. Still it's not a screed but a good action story with an atypical love story added.

Not for everyone: hard-core and depressing.

After "L'Assommoir" and "Nana," I was accustomed to Zola's "naturalist" style of reporting the details and constructing a story to make a point about Second Empire society. But "Germinal" surpasses those two, mainly due to Zola's efficiency. Middle-class readers in his day were likely to have invested more time than contemporary readers in reading (no search engines or video games in the late 19th century), so it's understandable why "Germinal" is so saturated with detail. That being noted, this is a masterfully written and passionate book that makes for fast reading. Zola is at his best evoking the coal elevator, the movements of an enraged crowd, the gossiping wives of miners, etc., giving the reader a clear description of the sights, sounds and smells of the moment.

A few reviewers have interpreted this is a tale of oppresive capitalism. While much of symbolism (the mine that eats the workers, the sufferings of Catherine and so on) could give that impression, this is story of disasterous ideology. Set in 1866-1867, when the Civil War in the U.S. exacerbated the coal industry's overcapitalization in France, Etienne falls in love with the proto-socialist movement (instead of Catherine) and sets off catastrophe. The episode in which Etienne, Chaval and Catherine wait underground for their rescuers is a potent metaphor for his relationship with the miners.

There are a number of very interesting characters in this book, who evolve to the decaying situations around them and often end up doing some very shocking things. Sprinkled with references to Darwin, "Germinal" features multiple characters that seems to revert to animal-like behavior. Whether Zola was not into economic progress as some suggest here is debatable, but there can be no mistake that he wanted to show the tremendous sacrifices that are involved. The change to the timbering rules by the company, the charge by the miners to Jean-Bart, and the act of sabotage by the Souvarine all have their disasterous unintended consequences. And it has been unintended consequences that defeated Marxism. In this way Zola was prophetic.

Chaval is mostly portrayed as a cruel man who represents the natural urges that Etienne constantly battles. A very good website by a professor at Washington State mentioned that "Chaval" resembles "cheval," which means "horse." So the practicality, beast-of-the-mines existence of Chaval is linked by name to the very sympathetic horses in this story. In this way Chaval is a fully-developed character in "Germinal."

Does this book have contemporary interpretations? During the week that I read this, there were two newspaper stories about coal mining. One in the weekend Milwaukee paper, told of a labor shortage in American coal mines, where in Pennsylvania and Ohio, veteran miners are returning to the towns they once had to leave. Soon afterward, the N.Y. Times described a tragic collapse in a coal mine in the central Henan province of China, showing a picture of thin, grey-clad family members crowding a building next to the entrance to the mine, waiting for names of the survivors and the still missing. Given the (capitalist) history of the U.S. and the (Communist) history of China, would Zola be surprised by the content of these two newspaper stories in 2004?

Coal mining in the U.S., of course, is a segment of the economy of which many environmentalists disapprove; its fate may be decided by the upcoming presidential election. Zola's "Germinal" is a masterpiece (I enjoyed the translation by Leonard Tanock), but its lessons may not be as simple as some readers may hope.

Reading Germinal is like receiving a hefty punch in the face, albeit in a good sense. I can only imagine what Zola's contemporaries must have thought as they finished it. It's a very brutal book in numerous ways - I was expecting the sentiments of Hugo, and man oh man, was I surprised. Germinal is a prime example of the burgeoning "naturalism" movement. And yet, it's hard to believe that Zola approached it scientifically, as he claimed to, since it's so utterly jam-packed with passion. In many places, the book is mind-numbingly brutal, shocking even today. Indeed, while many of Zola's contemporaries poetized the working class, Zola was careful to tell the truth about them - they are illiterate, brutal savages. Now, that fact is not their fault, as they have been raped by the system since birth, but it is nonetheless a fact that the author makes no effort to hide. Numerous scenes will leave the reader amazed at the senseless cruelty - the sorry end of the shopkeeper Maigrat, for instance - but this cruelty is not limited to any one side, giving the (correct) impression that it's inherent to the _system_, not any of the people.
But all of the politics would seem hollow if the book wasn't filled with unforgettable people. Monsieur Hennebeau's life of luxury is sharply contrasted with the lives of the starving workers - and yet one simply _cannot_ dismiss the aching, naked loneliness he feels every second as the pettiness of a rich man. It's real and it's terribly sad. Likewise, the repressed love that Etienne and Catherine (as well as Bebert and Lydie - now that was one of the most touching scenes I've ever read...) feel for each other is poignant beyond words. And while La Mouquette is certainly quite the ribald slut, she's also one of the book's most warmly sympathetic characters, and the love she bears Etienne is one of the purest feelings anyone feels in the book. And pure feelings seem precious to a reader when a lot of the book is filled with such disturbing depravity (Jeanlin's senseless abuse of his friends and ultimately senseless crimes, for instance).
Though the book makes a point that the horrible conditions of workers' life _cannot_ go on for much longer, it also very accurately shows the flaws of socialism - its description of the fall of the International, in hindsight, also fits the collapse of the Soviet Union as well as that of any other fallen ideal. In essence, the book pits two extremes against one another - the ideals of liberty/equality/fraternity versus the blackest form of corporate atavism, and the result is apocalyptically harrowing, and almost unbearably bleak. Zola's hope-filled ending in fact seems a little forced in lieu of all the shattering events of the rest of the book. That aside, it's definitely a classic in its own right (quite the page turner, too - I finished it in two days), and definitely deserves to be read.

In addition to their renowned pievishness, the French are expert pessimists. Indeed, they have raised pride, scorn, and sarcasm to such high art. But they were also great pioneers, from the political caricatures of Daumier to modernism.
Germinal was one of the first truly excellent muckraker novels, exploring the complex tableau of oppressed workers in early industrial society. THough there is some excessive melodrama in the characters, they open a world that few would be able to know without direct experience. We should never forget how new this was, how much of a pioneer Zola was. It is a huge success.
But the novel also stands very well on its own. The writing is austerely beautiful, textured to feel as dusty and cold as the mines themselves. THere are realistic good guys and bad guys, highly complex characters who enter into difficult fights, who were types that Zola largely invented and that have been copied many many times. On every page, I wanted to find out what would happen to them, how they grew or died, where they were from. I hoped for them, pitied them, and hated them and even wept from them in the climactic ending when a glimmer of humanity transcended the class struggle for just a moment.
I was fascinated and repelled by the world Zola recreates, which has been my reaction to French culture throughout my contact with it for the last 32 years!

This penetrating, almost lurid novel, exposes the brutish life of the coal miner in late nineteenth century France. This well-written, detailed story, exposes the appalling conditions of the workers, at a time when labor was just starting to organize. The failure of organized labor to ameliorate these conditions, at the time, made many, including Zola, feel that a socialist revolution, if not inevitable, was certainly desirable.
Zola has been referred to as the father of literary "naturalism". His literary vision captures life as it exists for the majority of the persons then alive, rather than the elite, whose lives had been the subject of most literature written up to this point. Germinal vivdly portrays the monotonous, near hopeless, life of the laborer: long hours; miserable working conditions that considerably shorten life expectancy and routinely cause medical problems early into middle age; and the almost common manner in which many young girls encounter their first lover (and often future husband) in non-consensual circumstances- in the mine, behind the barn, etc. Many readers were shocked or even outraged.
Zola's characters are fairly well-developed, and their patheticness is disturbingly believable. The plot (which seems secondary) details the counterproductive attempt to strike by the organized coalminers. The book is peopled with aristocrats and bourgeoisie as well as workers; but its most salient and revolutionary aspect is its primary focus upon the miserable lives of the oppressed. The particulary egregious plight of the workers in this story may slightly overstate the plight of Zola's contemporary workers, but the detailed and informed nature of Zola's description of the coal mine's operation leaves little doubt that the oppression faced by this generation of workers was all too real.
As a work of fiction, it is marred only by its incomplete, or unresolved ending, and the feeling that the development of the main character, Etienne, has not been fully realized, for better or for worse.

In addition to their renowned pievishness, the French are expert pessimists. Indeed, they have raised pride, scorn, and sarcasm to such high art. But they were also great pioneers, from the political caricatures of Daumier to modernism.
Germinal was one of the first truly excellent muckraker novels, exploring the complex tableau of oppressed workers in early industrial society. THough there is some excessive melodrama in the characters, they open a world that few would be able to know without direct experience. We should never forget how new this was, how much of a pioneer Zola was. It is a huge success.
But the novel also stands very well on its own. The writing is austerely beautiful, textured to feel as dusty and cold as the mines themselves. THere are realistic good guys and bad guys, highly complex characters who enter into difficult fights, who were types that Zola largely invented and that have been copied many many times. On every page, I wanted to find out what would happen to them, how they grew or died, where they were from. I hoped for them, pitied them, and hated them and even wept from them in the climactic ending when a glimmer of humanity transcended the class struggle for just a moment.
I was fascinated and repelled by the world Zola recreates, which has been my reaction to French culture throughout my contact with it for the last 32 years!

Mr. Zola did a great job of depicting deplorable working conditions. The setting is the 1870s in a coal mining village in France. Obviously, it was several decades before modern labor laws were enacted to protect workers. The workers were forced to endure back-breaking labor in unsafe conditions. Long term work led to black lung. Children, both boys and girls, were sent to work at a pre-teenage age. The workers barely made enough money to avoid starvation. And, worse of all, labor was at the mercy of management, meaning that the workers had little bargaining power and could see their wages cut for the most ludicrous reasons.

So, the workers revolted and conducted a strike. I don't want to spoil the exciting second half of the book. I'll just mention that the inexperience of the workers in how to conduct a strike and their overall dis-organization led to dire and tragic results. But lessons were learned. In the last pages of the novel, La Maheude (a character evoking our sympathetic) said to the protagonist: "Next time we'll show 'em"

I learned more about mining than I ever cared to know, but I agree that Mr. Zola obviously did his homework. It's worth reading

Emile Zola reminds me very much of D.H. Lawrence. Both authors were deeply affected, and sympathetic to, the plight of the working class, particularly the colliers. Unlike Lawrence, Zola appears to have actually spent some time either working in, or studying, the actual physical experience of being underground. His descriptions of these excursions into the "earth's belly" are so affecting, that you actually begin to feel clausterphobic.

I've never read anything so descriptive to actually cause a physical sensation of pure repulsion.

This is an excellent story about the dismal, grinding poverty of the working class in 18th century France, where the miners had

seemingly no options, no political support, no social safety-net or regulatory body established for any sort of protection against exploitation. The sheer inhumanity of their situation is appalling - this is an excellent read, and intertwined is a love story that is equally compelling. I highly recommend this classic.

Germinal is generally considered the greatest of Emile Zola's twenty novel Rougon-Macquart cycle. Of these, Germinal is the most concerned with the daily life of the working poor. Set in the mid 1860's, the novel's protaganist Etienne Lantier is hungry and homeless, wandering the French countryside, looking for work. He stumbles upon village 240, the home of a coal mine, La Voreteux. He quickly gets a job in the depths of the mine, experiencing the backbreaking work of toiling hundreds of feet below the earth. He is befriended by a local family and they all lament the constant work required to earn just enough to slowly starve. Fired up by Marxist ideology, he convinces the miners to strike for a pay raise. The remainder of the novel tells the story of the strike and its effect on the workers, managers, owners and shareholders.
Zola weaves a strong plot line along with a multitude of characters. The hallmark of this novel is the wealth of people who populate the pages. The miners are not the noble poor but men and women who live day to day, cruel in some ways, generous in others. The managers are owners are not evil, greedy men but complex characters who in some ways envy the freedom of the miners from conventional morality.
As with most Zola novels, don't expect a happy ending. But the reader can expect to be transported to a world and a way of life almost unimaginable for its brutality and bleakness. Like other great works of literature, the novel explores the thoughts and actions of people who suffer the daily indignities of poverty and injustice. Germinal is different however because the thoughts and actions are not noble and the consequences of their actions are felt by all. I would strongly recommend Germinal as one of the major novels of the 19th century but one that transcends time and place. The issues evoked in the novel regarding labor versus capital are just as relevant to today's world.

Germinal is a damned good book. A page-turner. Engrossing. Illuminating, too. The proletariat/capitalist conflict is better portrayed here than in any other work of fiction I've come across. One gets a sense of the conditions--granting Zola a degree of literary embellishment--that led to trade unionism, socialism, communism, and anarchism. Zola sides with the workers, as you'd expect, but he is honest about his characters' motivations. They are presented as three-dimensional, not didactic dummies for Zola to ventriloquize through. Zola's characters are so fleshed-out, in fact, that the reader develops a rapport, an emotional investment, with them. Not all make it through the book alive and well, and this is another refreshing bit of truth from Zola. Life is full of calamity, pain, and senseless suffering, but it continues nevertheless. Zola presents this without typical Gallic pretension...a worthy achievement in and of itself. A definite classic.

"Germinal" is perhaps Zola's best known work, it is easy to see why. Without a doubt, this is one of the most stunning, brutal, honest, heart-breaking, and, at times, painfully beautiful, books in world literature. Centering on a French coal mining community in the 19th century, Zola mixes social commentary, political philosophy and keen psychological insight to create a story that can still move readers more than one hundred years after being published. While the suffering of the working-class characters is extreme, Zola is never melodramatic and never portrays one-dimensional characters or stock emotions. In the end, "Germinal" succeeds not so much as story about mining, labour strikes or human suffering, but as a portrait of the strenghts and weakness of the human spirit. I can't recommend this book highly enough and urge anyone seeking a deeper understanding of humanity to read "Germinal".

It should be illegal for certain books to be translated into film. I pity the person who does not read, who for whatever reason, cannot create in the mind the vivd imagery laid down in this incredible novel. No movie can come close. I was about a third into "Germinal" when, coincidentally, my union of grocery clerks called for a strike. Of course, almost any similarity between the well-fed and well-compensated clerk of today and the starving, wretched lot portrayed in the novel are absurd. The thing that struck me most were the character representations of both the workers and the owners. The stakes were different, but the mood was exactly the same. I saw first-hand, the leaders, the followers, the sabotuers. I saw those who would settle at any price, and those who would hold out at any cost.
Emil Zola was the kind of writer we just don't see anymore. He risked his career and his freedom to help a Jewish army officer unjustly accused. In "Germinal," he created one of the most dismal landscapes ever put onto paper. As research for the book, he allowed himself to be lowered into a mine shaft, so he could understand a little of what the miner felt as he dropped down into the darkness. Surely these were the pits of Hell. Writing about a labor strike is no easy task, especially if the author is wont to take sides, which Zola undoubtably did. The most remarkable thing about "Germinal" is Zola's even-handedness in his characterizations. Neither side is presented as wholly in the right or the wrong. There are quite a few bizarre character twists, such as the owner Hennebeau who winds up in envy of the workers as he realizes the emptiness of his own existence. Few novels are able to convey the brutality of life for the extremely impoverished, and Zola presents it with authenticity and with relish. There are scenes which will remain in my mind for a lifetime. The characters are as real as any that can be found in the world.
No summation, no casual review can even give a sense of the power of this one book. "Germinal" is anything but casual. It haunts me like few books have. If it is entertainment you desire, read "Jurassic Park." If your soul wants to be touched, read "Germinal."

Émile Zola's Germinal is a disheartening account of many people who work in the mines of the town of Montsou in France. In the beginning of this account, a young man called Étienne comes in to Village 240 in Montsou looking for a job that he finds in the Le Voreux coal mine. Here he meets the Maheu family. But during this work of fiction, Étienne becomes an instigator of a strike of the mining workers. This all due to the sneaky wage cut made the Grégoires mining company. The company has changed around the payment to make it look like the workers are getting the same amount of money, but the workers realize that it is a wage cut and end up striking. Almost all of the workers in the mine are already in terrible poverty and it only gets worse.

In the first part of the novel, Zola explains in great detail the condition and appearance of the mines. Also, we hear about the experiences' of the characters in the story, such as Grandpa Bonnemort always coughing up black !saliva. Additionally, we meet Levaque, Pierrones, and Mouque who are fellow miners. In Part Two, we are introduced to the wealthy Grégoire family in great descriptiveness as well as other top executives in the mining company. During Part Three, we meet Souvarine, a Russian who is a violent anarchist who wants to destroy many things. This begins the line of tragedy for the Maheus.

The story begins and ends in the spring; beginning in March and ending in April. These parts all show the germination of the characters in the story. In the beginning, many people were surviving with what they had. Even though the company decreased the wages, it would still be more money than the people made striking. During the 1880s in France, times were hard and things didn't change very quickly. The strike didn't make things any better for the workers; it just made things worse.

Admittedly, I only read this book in college because it was a reading assignment in a humanities class, but it changed my life. I am forever grateful that I read this book. I had never before considered the power of a company over its employees until I had read this book. Granted, this book is a work of fiction, but many of the details about the living conditions of the miners are true. If you doubt this, please investigate for yourself. Also, this book is not completely one sided for the main protagonist does nothing to further the cause of socialism for at the end of the story, it clearly depicts his willingness to sacrifice the lives of others to further the cause of the greater good. But who can say that their own version of "good" should be the only version of the "good". Read this book, it will make you think!

As an aspiring author of regional fiction ("Suomalaiset: People of the Marsh" ISBN 0972005064)who was raised on liberal politics amidst the boom and bust of Minnesota's iron mines and timber industry, "Germinal's" featured protagonist, Etienne Lantier, strikes a chord with me. There is much about the American labor movement and the plight of American workers to be found in Etienne's story. Though conditions in our factories, mines, and in our forests have markedly improved since the days of children working the coal fields of West Virginia and the iron mines of the Mesabi Iron Range, Zola's prose and his social observations about wealth, capital, and the exploitation of the common man by those in power rings true in 21st century America. A beautifully translated work, succinctly direct, wonderfully cast, with prose that makes you sigh. One of my ten all time favorite novels.

Zola's wonderfully written tale of the struggles and trials of the coal miners of Le Voreux stresses the utter futility of passive socialism. After a lengthy strike, the miners are still cheated by the company, only they are more bitter and disillusioned. Enter Souvarine, the Russian exile who turned their bleak world topsy-turvy. A nihilist by choice, he reflects a fine mix of Dostoyevsky's Peter Verkovensky and Turgenyev's Bazarov. In the end, only the destructive whimsey of Souvarine accomplishes anything remotely productive.

This brilliant novel depicts the endless struggle between rich and poor, here personified by coal miners and mine owners. Etienne, a down and outer, arrives at the mining village begging for work. Within a year he has convinced his fellow miners to go on strike. The company refuses to back down. The miners slowly starve and after a confrontation with the militia, which results in the death of many of the main characters, the striking miners give in. They have won nothing.

Catherine, the main female character, elects to return to work in the mines regardless of pay or conditions because the alternatives of starving or working in a brothel are worse to her than pushing heavy wagons underground. Etienne decides to go with her. They are both trapped when the pumping mechanism of the mine breaks down and the mine is flooded, trapping them both. After many days Catherine dies but Etienne is eventually rescued.

A well written and well-plotted book that in its narration of an unsuccessful workers' strike and its' aftermath brilliantly depicts the endless struggle between rich and poor, and also puts are present day petty problems into painfully stark relief.

Germinal is one of the most profound works ever written. Zola was at his peak during this point of his career. The ideas of "naturalism", or showing life as it really is and not glorifying existence is evident by the graphic descriptions of the squalid lives of the miners. A legendary work of 19th Century literature.

I was sorry to finish this book. A weekend spent in bed with tonsilitis turned into a weekend never to be forgotten. I was overwhelmed by the bitter beauty of Germinal, transfixed by it's vivid imagery and destroyed by the harsh realism of the character's pitiful yet determined existence. Very much in the Dickens mode, Zola's writing cannot help but move you.

It's supposed to be a classic, right? Apparently, there's some greatness in there that I have missed, because reading it was TORTUROUS! There's no other word for it. It cried because I had to read it for a University presentation and I just couldn't get through the pages. It was such a bad book that from a group of five people, I was the only one who presented it because I was the only one who could go through the book. It was boring from the very beginning, with descriptions and more descriptions and way too many words to show a simple thing. But it gets worse. The characters seemed flat to me, the narration didn't go deep enough to see their thoughts and feelings about what was going on, just description and more description. So much description makes it gruesome. Do I really need to know the details about the color of the worker's phlegm? Do I need to know the form and consistency of the blisters in their hands?
Not only that, but the overall plot? It's tragedy after tragedy. People die, get trapped, more people die, people lose limbs, more people die. I mean, maybe it was supposed to be touching, but after the 3rd time it starts to get annoying. I really, really hated this book, even though I did ace my paper about it.

Prole Art leaves me cold. From the songs of Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen to the paintings of Thomas Hart Benton to the plays of Lynn Nottage to the films of Elia Kazan to the poetry of Carl Sandburg to the novels of Upton Sinclair, Theodore Dreiser, John Steinbeck. An exercise in self-congratulatory commiseration: artist pats himself on the back creating Prole Art, audience pats itself on its backs viewing Prole Art. Human beings are reduced to social problems; to lab rats. Before Marx the working class was not seen that way at all but as individuals doing menial but by no means unimportant work. Shakespeare, Balzac, Dickens, Dostoevsky, Shaw, Faulkner, others, saw them not as objects of pity but as forceful individuals who often grew into their most compelling fictional characters. Like Alfred P. Doolittle who prefers to live as a serenely happy dustman free of all morals let alone the shackles of middle-class morality.

So I began this 500-plus pager about a coal miners’ strike in 1860’s France with trepidation. Which just goes to show you. How does Zola get right what others get wrong? First he gathers facts, facts, facts. Analyzes, analyzes, analyzes. Plots, plots, plots. Then starts things off with a stranger in town, Etienne Lantier, who is clearly trouble from the get-go. Add the working class Maheu family; the bourgeoisie Gregoires family; the petty bourgeoisie Hennebeaus family. Mix up with Pluchart, a socialist; Souvarine, a Russian anarchist; and a dozen others all of whom, like characters in Dickens, reverberate with life. Zola not only shows Them against Us, but Us against Us and Them against Them. Being French he doesn’t neglect sex, making Thomas Hardy and even D. H. Lawrence seem prudishly uptight. Zola stirs the stew till it boils then boils over, and over, and over. In the end he earns the right to finish things off thusly: “Beneath the blazing rays of the sun, on this morning when the world seemed young, such was the stirring which the land carried in its womb. New men were starting into life, a black army of vengeance slowly germinating in the furrows, growing for the harvests of the century to come; and soon this germination would tear the earth apart.”

A great book? One doubts finicky brother Henry agreed but here’s William James in a 7/12/1889 letter to his wife: “Yesterday, Sunday, Harry went to the country after breakfast, whilst I wrote a lot of notes and read Zola's GERMINAL, a story of mines and miners, and a truly magnificent work, if successfully to reproduce the horror and pity of certain human facts and make you see them as if real can make a book magnificent.”

It can.

Mr Zola leaves no stone unturned. Every action is detailed to the point of exhaustion. A visit to France in this era made me appreciate what poverty is and the inner feelings of the characters. A very powerful story that follows in line with (Le Misersbles), a very heart breaking story.
I normally do not like abridged novels, I could make an exception.