Book Review
Nov. 20th, 2020 08:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kenjariL'Assommoir
By Emile Zola
This grim and gritty novel is set in the 1850s and concerns Gervaise,a young Parisian laundress who begins as a hardworking and modestly ambitious woman. After being ditched by her lover Lantier, and left with two small children to raise, Gervaise marries a roofer and sets up her own laundry business. For a time they are prosperous and successful. But when her husband turns to drinking after being injured in a work accident, Gervaise gradually falls into poverty and degradation.
L'Assommoir is a fairly depressing story, but Zola makes it into compelling and often even enjoyable reading. He has a knack for describing working class Paris with a sharp realism and humanity that brings out both the darkness and the light of the people and the lives they lead there. He also provides an unflinching look at how hard the poor must work to get ahead, and how precarious it all is. I really felt for Gervaise, who was possessed of a very relatable mixture of faults and virtues that contributed to both her brief ascendancy and her downfall. It was thus hard to watch her fall farther and farther into addiction and destitution. It's a bleak book, but well worth the read.
By Emile Zola
This grim and gritty novel is set in the 1850s and concerns Gervaise,a young Parisian laundress who begins as a hardworking and modestly ambitious woman. After being ditched by her lover Lantier, and left with two small children to raise, Gervaise marries a roofer and sets up her own laundry business. For a time they are prosperous and successful. But when her husband turns to drinking after being injured in a work accident, Gervaise gradually falls into poverty and degradation.
L'Assommoir is a fairly depressing story, but Zola makes it into compelling and often even enjoyable reading. He has a knack for describing working class Paris with a sharp realism and humanity that brings out both the darkness and the light of the people and the lives they lead there. He also provides an unflinching look at how hard the poor must work to get ahead, and how precarious it all is. I really felt for Gervaise, who was possessed of a very relatable mixture of faults and virtues that contributed to both her brief ascendancy and her downfall. It was thus hard to watch her fall farther and farther into addiction and destitution. It's a bleak book, but well worth the read.
