Rating: 
Summary: It's frightening how dreadfull to read a book can be!
Review: This is by far the WORST AND POOREST book I've ever read. Any normal human being (or animal)who has read this book will either become mad and kill himself or throw it from the highest floor of the nearest building after having rippen it to pieces (I also burned it). I have read a lot of books in my life (I read 4 books/week since I'm 9) and this is the only one I've destroied!! It's horrible and I'm now sure that Zola was completely out of his mind!!!
Nana is a completely stupid and horrible 18-year old girl who can't do anything else than prostitute herself and destroy others lives and who (God thank you) dies like all her family in the other books. The book is SO BORING!!!!!! You really want to die to stop reading it!!! And it's long..
There doesn't happen anything during the whole book, which is almost 700 pages long!! I read it in French, I hope it's better in English for the poor souls who will have to read it.
Zola is well-known because he writes "well", meaning he uses methaphores and other special constructions, but can you imagine 700 pages full of words you don't understand and complicated structures??!! It's like hell.
The book is a critizism of the Second Empire, politics, and how society works. It's a naturalist novel and heredity is the most important fact. Now we know that all the theory of heredity is false, so this novel is completely out-of-date. I hope you will never have to analyse Nana, because it's almost impossible, I tried!!!! (for school of course).
IF YOU WANT TO LIVE LONG AND HAPPY, DON'T BUY OR READ THIS BOOK!!!!!!!
Rating: 
Summary: indictment of decadence
Review: This novel employs a courtesan, Nana, to condamn the decadence of late 2nd Empire France (1852-1870). Arising from a family ravaged by alcoholism and abuse, the great beauty Nana becomes a celebrity in theatre and then as the mistress of the high aristocracy and bourgeous. At her core, she is a devourer, empty of anything but the will to suck whatever she can out of anyone who comes near. She ruins the fortunes of numerous men with frivolous demands for things she barely wants, and Zola in the process illuminates how they made their careers and were ruined by their appeites for this woman, who becomes an archetypal destuctive force. It is indeed a bleak and severe indictment of an entire society: you learn how celebrity worked in it, from the bottom up and back down again. Her sexuality is omnivorous, the men her willing victims for a mention in the Figaro gossip columns. (As Zola put, "les hommes suivent une chienne qui n'est pas en chaleur.")Zola makes for fascinating reading, as does Balzac, for the wider tableau he paints. The writers are similar, except that Zola was a far more careful writer. Unfortunately, it is often difficult to find any characters you can like or admire, which makes the cynicism and condamnations overbearing and hard to get through at times. There are numerous inventions in it that became classic, like "blond venus" and "golden fly". This adds to it as a glorious classic novel. In a wider sense, this is one of the central novels in Zola's cycle on the "natural history" of an extended family, the Rougon-Macquart. It is based on a crude kind of Darwinist sociology, a kind of reasoning that was in its infancy when he wrote and which later culminated in Freud and Durkheim. THat is another level that is quite fascinating, a philosophical cycle of novels mixing biological science and Schopenauer, all deeply pessimistic and determinist. Recommended, but it takes perserverence and a strong stomach to finish it.
Rating:
Summary: indictment of decadence
Review: This novel employs a courtesan, Nana, to condamn the decadence of late 2nd Empire France (1852-1870). Arising from a family ravaged by alcoholism and abuse, the great beauty Nana becomes a celebrity in theatre and then as the mistress of the high aristocracy and bourgeous. At her core, she is a devourer, empty of anything but the will to suck whatever she can out of anyone who comes near. She ruins the fortunes of numerous men with frivolous demands for things she barely wants, and Zola in the process illuminates how they made their careers and were ruined by their appeites for this woman, who becomes an archetypal destuctive force. It is indeed a bleak and severe indictment of an entire society: you learn how celebrity worked in it, from the bottom up and back down again. Her sexuality is omnivorous, the men her willing victims for a mention in the Figaro gossip columns. (As Zola put, "les hommes suivent une chienne qui n'est pas en chaleur.") Zola makes for fascinating reading, as does Balzac, for the wider tableau he paints. The writers are similar, except that Zola was a far more careful writer. Unfortunately, it is often difficult to find any characters you can like or admire, which makes the cynicism and condamnations overbearing and hard to get through at times. There are numerous inventions in it that became classic, like "blond venus" and "golden fly". This adds to it as a glorious classic novel. In a wider sense, this is one of the central novels in Zola's cycle on the "natural history" of an extended family, the Rougon-Macquart. It is based on a crude kind of Darwinist sociology, a kind of reasoning that was in its infancy when he wrote and which later culminated in Freud and Durkheim. THat is another level that is quite fascinating, a philosophical cycle of novels mixing biological science and Schopenauer, all deeply pessimistic and determinist. Recommended, but it takes perserverence and a strong stomach to finish it.
Rating:
Summary: The Price of riding Nana
Review: Zola presents us with the omnipotence of debauchery. Nana is empowered by the elusiveness of the respect that she craves. This sends her on a mission to revel in her debauchery and destroy the value placed upon material objects. She harnassess her sexuality to reduce people to mere possessions to be used and discarded at her leisure. It's her game, the stakes are high and she makes the rules.
Rating:
Summary: The Price of riding Nana
Review: Zola presents us with the omnipotence of debauchery. Nana is empowered by the elusiveness of the respect that she craves. This sends her on a mission to revel in her debauchery and destroy the value placed upon material objects. She harnassess her sexuality to reduce people to mere possessions to be used and discarded at her leisure. It's her game, the stakes are high and she makes the rules.
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