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Customer Review: House of Fools
Zola's literary terrain was the victim with no voice, the laborers, those that made civilization run at great human cost. In "Pot- Bouille", (Boiling Pot), Zola has taken on the middle class residents of an apartment building and savages their collective pretensions of moral superiority. The stink of petty economies, money lust and aristocratic yearing is everywhere. His hero is Octave Mouret a young cloth merchant from the provinces who comes to 1860s Paris to make his fortune. In this residential building whose public areas are overdone with architectural garnish Mouret makes his home among an unhealthy bunch of souls. There are voracious mothers trying to marry off lackluster, shallow daughters, philandering husbands, besieged, toiling husbands, cold indifferent wives, callous mistresses. The servants are stored away for the night in their garret rooms after a day of being subjected to the customary regimen of abuse and bullying dished up by their employers. That the servants are a crude, ignorant crowd makes them no more worthy of respect than their masters. In the parallel world of house help slop bucket throwing, vulgar gossip, same sex seduction and infant death figures prominently. On the quest to conquer big, bad Paris Mouret helps himself heartily to all this messy stew offers whether neighbors' wives or solitary widows. He tastes whatever his manipulations bring his way. Women are a banquet fit for the taking if they can be emotionally and physically overpowered, so says the masculine imperative of the times. But then the female characters here have little to admire. The women represent a menu of every sort of female vice, wallowing in vanity, indolence and self-complacency served up in heaping portions. There is so much tragedy in this house that the horrors of greed and duplicity become almost farcical in Zola's hands. On these pages we live through a years worth of Jerry Springer moments top hats and crinoline hoop skirts flying in contentious free-for-all. "Pot- Bouille" is a feast of poisonous family values to be savored comfortably by the modern reader from the vantage point of a new (more humanist?) millennium.
Customer Review: superb story telling in (what appears to be) a good translation
An enjoyable read about 19th century Paris with lots of characters (don't even try to remember who is who without a written list... and it doesn't matter because they all end up sleeping with someone!). Evocative of place and period.
Interesting to compare Zola with Balzac and Stendahl. Zola was considered salacious for a while, but now is back in good graces. Well worth a try if you enjoy these novels.
Customer Review: An underappreciated masterpiece
In my opinion this is one of Zola's greatest works. This is the tenth book in his Rougon-Macquart series, though that's not vitally important because they all stand alone as individual works of literature. The novel gives us a window into the secret lives and discrete liaisons of the inhabitants of a middle-class apartment building in Paris during France's Second Empire. There are many shades of gray within that "middle class", and in this book everyone tries in some way to claw and scratch their way to a higher level of status. This book features an ensemble cast of characters, including Octave Mouret, son of Francois Mouret and Marthe Rougon from Zola's earlier work The Conquest of Plassans. Octave moves into the building, and soon begins seeking an affair with an older, wealthier woman who will provide him with a foot-in-the-door of Parisian society. Elsewhere in the building, a mother pimps her daughters at dinner parties, trying to secure a match that will improve the family's bleak financial future. Siblings of a well-to-do family squabble over the leavings of their dead father. Men squander their wealth on mistresses. Illicit affairs take place from the basement to the attic, all covered by a veneer of respectability. Away from the street-side facade of righteousness, however, the servants in the courtyard know the real goings-on and offer commentary like a sort of Greek chorus. This is what Zola does best. He creates a setting, populates it with a cast of diverse characters, engages them in an intricate series of events, and puts the reader right in the middle of it. This book is a real treat for any reader of classic literature, even if you're not familiar with Zola or the Rougon-Macquart series. Fans of Zola's other works will find it on a par with his great masterpieces Germial and La Terre.
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