Rating: 
Summary: Exaggeration
Review: As the back cover of the book says, Nana by Emile Zola is the story of a woman of very low birth who uses her beauty to conquer the high society men of Paris on her way to becoming a courtesan of immense power and attraction. Nana takes place during the final days of the Second Empire of Napoleon III and actually ends with the event that would herald the downfall of the empire: the declaration of war against Prussia.Zola is considered the leading member of the naturalist group of writers. Naturalists are concerned with real worldliness. They wish to portray a sense of what life is really like for their characters. They tend more to concentrate on the type of character that they are writing about instead of the character's uniqueness. As such, Nana becomes a story more about courtesans from lowly births than it is about Nana. Naturalist writing also tends to lend itself to subjects of societal ills and debauchery. Naturalists seek to show the world in all its filth and depravity. To do this they must go where one finds this stuff: in the gutters. Unfortunately, in his attempt to portray the character types one finds in the company of someone like Nana, Zola has created more caricatures than characters. Few of the characters in Nana where credible participants. Nana herself is unlike anyone you would find in sane society and seems more like an amalgam of various real world influences than a person of one mind. The male characters of Nana were particularly egregious examples of overzealousness by Zola. The Comte Muffat is Nana's primary benefactor throughout the story. He withstands great hardships and torments from Nana with nary a protest. This may have been believeable if only Muffat had been the victim of Nana's capriciousness; but, she strings along many more men in this manner, robbing them of their dignity and fortunes without so much as a whimper from them. Nana is compared to a golden fly who rises from the dung heap to taint the high society Parisian world that she invades with her low birth debauchery and sin. Nana may be a metaphor for the overall breakdown of French society which preceded the collapse of the Second Empire; but, Zola would have done better to lay it on less thick. Nana could have been an excellent statement on the necessity of retaining a moral backbone to maintain the fabric of society. Instead, it reads like a cheap nineteenth century soap opera played out with exaggerated, unreal characters.
Rating: 
Summary: A Lesser Known Masterpiece But Must Be Acknowledged
Review: Emile Zola is credited to have written the first "modern" French novels, that is to say, novels about contemporary subject matter and society, written in a natural style, which is why he is called a Naturalist writer. He was a very observant man, with an eye for detail and realistic dialogue and scenarios. He was a friend of the Impressionist artist Edgar Degas, who himself was considered to be a modern artist for his photographic style of paintings. Emile Zola's greatest novel has got to be Nana. Far from the sugary and innocent Gigi story by Gabrielle Colette which would come later, Nana takes place as the French Second Empire comes to a close. From 1852 to 1870, France became a capitalistic Gilded Age, a time in which men and women would stop at nothing to make it into high society. The decadence of the period is captured, as well as the poverty and decaying morals. It would not be long before Emperor Louis Napoleon III lost the Franco Prussian War (1870-1871) and the empire collapsed. Nana is the daughter of a poor laundress- a washer woman from the country. She becomes a courtesan, a high class prostitute with many wealthy and powerful clients. These include financiers and even a count. Nana has an influence over all the men she becomes involved with, and they are smitten by her, offering her homes and material benefits from her ... favors. In the end, Nana becomes a symbol for the ... society of Emile Zola's time. This novel is a good read for fans of Zola's Naturalistic style and should be read prior to his "The Debacle" which deals with the Franco Prussian War. Nana became the subject for a Manet painting. The book and the painting shocked the stuffy Salon society of Paris, especially because Nana is so blatant in her ...feminine powers over men. But the novel is excellent, a masterpiece of French literature, a critique on the ridiculous level of poverty at the time. Mothers were willing to sell their daughters into prostitution. Nana, however much a hold she has over the men, cannot get the one thing she truly wants- a place in decent French society. She was always seen as a courtesan with no real ladylike qualities. They were wrong. Nana is a great character, and Emile Zola takes us to that time with such precison and power that we are as if in a time machine transported to those French streets and to those brothel bedrooms. He writes without any hold bars. His novels should be made into films. I suggest this reading material for any fan of French writers. If you like Honore De Balzac, Gustav Flaubert and the time period of the Second French Empire, this is your book.
Rating:
Summary: Adultery, lesbianism, and a bunch of lustful fools
Review: How does this woman keep all her lovers' names straight? She manipulates men, and a few women, with sex (or the threat of sexual denial) to take all she can get from Paris high society, ruining everyone who succombs to her "sensuous curves and marble like skin" She gains plenty of material goods from her numerous lovers, even a beautiful apartment in Paris and a manor in the provinces. But she is never able to gain the two things she desires most from Parisian high society: their respect and an equal place among them. No matter how hard she tries to rise above her humble birth as a laundress' daughter (l'assommoir) she is never looked upon as anything more than a courtesan
Rating:
Summary: Adultery, lesbianism, and a bunch of lustful fools
Review: How does this woman keep all her lovers' names straight? She manipulates men, and a few women, with sex (or the threat of sexual denial) to take all she can get from Paris high society, ruining everyone who succombs to her "sensuous curves and marble like skin" She gains plenty of material goods from her numerous lovers, even a beautiful apartment in Paris and a manor in the provinces. But she is never able to gain the two things she desires most from Parisian high society: their respect and an equal place among them. No matter how hard she tries to rise above her humble birth as a laundress' daughter (l'assommoir) she is never looked upon as anything more than a courtesan
Rating:
Summary: Nana.
Review: I found the book well written and enjoyable. So much so I have purchased and will read the other books from the cycle (Series). It's evident why numerous books written by Zola have remained classics for so many years.
Rating:
Summary: A scathing satire that is very relevant to today
Review: I read this book and felt it was a scathing satire on the way people can take something of little intrinsic value and "market" it, elevating ti to a place of veneration it should never have. Nana is an actress who really can't act or sing, but she is beautiful. She isn't particularly intelligent or deep and isn't moral. Yet, she is persued by men, becomes the toast of the town, becomes rich and successful, has a brilliant career and active love life. One by one, Nana destroys those around her almost without intention. The last scene in which we see the foreshadowings of the end of an age, is the subtle bit of sulphuric acid satire that is also a keen observation on what happens to civilization when it's members value the wrong things. Brilliant as satire and moral fable!
Rating:
Summary: Rotten Gloss of the Empire
Review: In "Nana", Nana's lovers were: 1. A respectable count
2. His elderly father-in-law
3. A Jewish banker from Frankfurt
4. An actor from "la Variete" theater
5. A count (different from the afore-mentioned) who earns/squanders his fortune on horse races
6. Two brothers (one serves in the army, the other is just a teenage libertine)
7. A provincial cousin of the undermentioned "Figaro" columnist
8. A member of the British royalty
9. Another courtesan It is described how most of them end up in the last paragraph of chapter XIII. Other important participants of this love polygon were: 11. A cynical "Figaro" journal columnist
12. A pimp who employs his own wife as a prostitute
13. Numerous women who earn their living the same way Nana does The novel is very loosely tied with the Rougon-Macquart family tree. We only know (from chapter II) that both of Nana's parents are already dead and all throughout the novel Nana does not get in any contact with her three half-brothers. Only in chapter X, when Nana entertains her guests, she talks a little about her background. However, to find out where Nana came from, one must read "L'Assommoir/the Drum Shop". Some think that the novel is exaggerated almost to the point of grotesque. But the truth is that it is not; it gives an honest portrayal of the French society late under Napoleon III. "Nana" (especially chapter XIV) serves as a great prelude to the novel "la Debacle/the Downfall", though the two are completely different from one another in theme and the former was published in 1880 and is #9 in the R.-M. cycle, whereas the latter was published in 1892 and is #19 in the R.-M. cycle.
Rating: 
Summary: gender-reversal during the decline of the Second Empire
Review: In this novel, one of Zola's five or six "great books" about life during the Second Empire of France, we see a great number of men fall under the destructive influence of Nana, a demimonde who rose to fame from the backstreets of Paris. Nana is a prostitute, performer, socialite and celebrity all in one, making for a massive force of destruction. While every bit as earthy (and then some) as "L'Assommoir," this story is not quite as grim; depending on your sense of humor, it is also funnier.
For 1880, the descriptions of Nana's numerous trysts, games and affairs are, um, rather progressive, but this is a result of Zola's "naturalist" style. He collected copious notes on real figures at the time, and stood by the accuracy of his details. Nana did actually exist as a demimonde (or maybe a few), hastening the decadence of Napoleon III's France.
The back cover misleadingly advertises this story is a "poem of male desires," when it is Nana's desires and ambitions which drive the plot and dominate the imagery. Like no other book that I've read, "Nana" reverses the gender roles of its characters; with a fair amount of cross-dressing, homosexuality, physical abuse and assorted perversions. There are some dramatic scenes of degradation of Nana's men which are either 1.) some measure of revenge on men (Nana's mother experienced a lot of abuse in "L'Assommoir"), 2.) revenge on the wealthy, or 3.) expressions of boredom. Fans of "Fear Factor" might appreciate.
Zola's themes have a lot of parallels today: decadence, fear of aging, and destructive affairs (look at what a divorce proceeding did to General Electric's share price). I had no problem with the translation by Mr. Holden, and the story is certainly not boring. "Nana" is probably not for anyone, certainly not for younger readers, but it deserves its reputation as a great book.
Rating:
Summary: Girl Power in the 1860s
Review: No drugs, no rock 'n' roll but plenty of sex. Great entertainment in itself, this book is best read as a sequel to "L'Assommoir" whose tragic downtrodden heroine can be said, in a way, to have got her revenge on society through her daughter, Nana. You might say it's a case of the underclass striking back and one wonders how today's acting and modelling scene compares with Second Empire Paris. Someone once said that every woman is sitting on a gold mine and Nana certainly proves it. Trouble is, she also proves the old saying "easy come, easy go". What would have happened if she'd been inoculated against smallpox?
Rating:
Summary: Girl Power in the 1860s
Review: No drugs, no rock 'n' roll but plenty of sex. Great entertainment in itself, this book is best read as a sequel to "L'Assommoir" whose tragic downtrodden heroine can be said, in a way, to have got her revenge on society through her daughter, Nana. You might say it's a case of the underclass striking back and one wonders how today's acting and modelling scene compares with Second Empire Paris. Someone once said that every woman is sitting on a gold mine and Nana certainly proves it. Trouble is, she also proves the old saying "easy come, easy go". What would have happened if she'd been inoculated against smallpox?
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