L'Assommoir (Oxford World's Classics)

Rating:
Summary: The Pernicious Consequences of Poverty and Alcoholism
Review: Gervaise Macquart's downfall basically boils down to her lack of culture. Visiting the Louvre museum (in chapter III) shows how the lower social classes interprete the centuries-old culture. This very lack of culture is the reason for the alcohol addiction and other vises portrayed in "l'Assomoir/the Drum Shop". It also explains the underdevelopment of the class-consciousness.

Only as late as chapter X Gervaise starts drinking, but she soon becomes addicted to it, which reflects not only the poor living conditions, but also her ancestry (referring to the novels "la fortune des Rougons/the fortune of Rougons" and "Doctor Pascal"). There is a very brief mention (early in the novel) of Gervaise' sister Lisa from the novel "La Ventre de Paris/the Underbelly of Paris", but Gervaise never gets into any contacts with her; that explains that the social status plays a more important role than the family ties.

There are interesting depictions of Nana, the <> of the novel with the same title. In chapter V there are some glimpses of Nana as a small girl and chapter XI shows more mature Nana...

Guijet is a somewhat controversial character. He is a lot different from everybody else in a positive way but it is questionable whether sobriety and hard work alone can save one from plunging into an abyss; environmental factors also play some role.

Rating:
Summary: Heart wrenching
Review: This is a story of poverty. It explores the life of a family who cannot escape from wretchedness. The fault is both in themselves and society. L'Assommoir is at the apex of social novels. It describes the hardships and expectations of persons scarcely able to feed themselves. During the course of the book Zola addresses these and other social issues: domestic violence, child abuse, alcoholism, infidelity, prostitution, and selfishness. Zola also discusses the childhood of Nana. But the Book, Nana, is virtually independent of L'Assomoir.

Zola shows his power to tug at the heart strings. The novel is written with tremendous depth of subject matter and is a quick read.

One of the reviewers below wrote that it is a prohibitionist novel. I disagree with this perspective. The book is not against all uses of alcohol; rather, it is against the abuse of alcohol.

Rating:
Summary: Hammering.
Review: Zola was an amazingly prolific writer - he wrote about thirty novels, and all of them were solidly on the "long" side. Moreover, each was a huge self-contained universe, and a gritty, harrowing epic to boot. In many ways, L'Assommoir is the central novel in his famed 20-novel Rougon/Macquart cycle, as many of the subsequent books have a direct connection to it (Gervaise's daughter is the "star" of Nana; her son is the star of Germinal, and her other son the star of The Masterpiece; etc. etc.). It's an extremely difficult book for the modern man to read - at the time, the novel's crude language and filth shocked readers; as the translator astutely notes, this is unlikely to happen now. Moreover, it's a damningly hard book to translate - not only is it filled with the most complex, specific 19th century French slang there was (even Zola's contemporaries had trouble deciphering it), it has a very peculiar narration style. Zola, usually a fan of a dispassionate sort of narration, adopts a very jerky, repetitive, slangy form here - it's almost as if it's told from Gervaise's perspective, although the story is clearly third-person-omniscient. This is fascinating, though the seemingly endless "Now then"s and "Lord!"s and "Let me tell you"s and so on do tend to grate after a while.

But this is all piffle seeing as the story is so amazingly powerful. Zola's one accomplishment here is this - he makes Gervaise such a believable human being that you will genuinely want her to rise above the poverty and find success and happiness. In fact, this does occur in the course of three chapters. Alas, this state does not last, and for another six chapters or so, Gervaise is more and more degraded until we come to the almost unspeakably horrible conclusion. The horrible circumstances of this end, the degradation and humiliation she suffers are undeniably harrowing, and is made worse by this - a lot of her troubles do not come from "the rich," but from her fellow poor, who delight at pounding her into the dirt.

The novel is filled with remarkable characters - Gervaise herself comes first and foremost, but there's also the striking character of Lalie, the execrable shallowness of the Lorilleux (whom I guarantee the reader will blindly hate with an almost silly passion), and above all the melancholy figure of the blacksmith Goujet. Best of all, Zola never preaches, allowing the characters to speak for themselves. It's not even necessarily a profound social statement (though it is) as much as a character study. The author presents you with the facts - now it's up to you to figure out your resulting opinions. This is truly an unforgettable piece here, certainly on par with other 19th century French titans as Hugo's Les Miserables and Balzac's Pere Goriot. Not light reading by any means, but really an incredible novel.