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daja57's review against another edition
5.0
This no-holds-barred story tells of the people living in a French mining village in the 1860s. Hugely realistic, it chronicles their lives as men, women, children and horses go down into the pit to extract coal. It describes their poverty and the near-bestial lives they lead, unable to make ends meet, living together in single rooms, taking their pleasure in one another's bodies in the fields. They are struggling to survive. But there is a recession and the Company, awash with surplus coal, seeks to reduce the wages of the workers. This leads to a strike and to violence.
The title, which refers to a spring month in the French revolutionary calendar, relies on the last lines of the novel which, after so much bleakness and hardship, seem to promise a fresh start and hope for the future: "Men were springing up, a black avenging host was slowly germinating in the furrows, thrusting upwards for the harvests of future ages. And very soon their germination would crack the earth asunder." (7.6; last lines)
The central character, Etienne, is previously seen in another of Zola's twenty volume novel sequence in which he set out to write a a naturalistic and realistic mirror to society focusing on a single family.
Germinal is generally recognised as Zola's masterpiece. Its unrelenting focus on poverty reminded me of George Orwell's Road to Wigan Pier but it was written in 1885, fifty years before Orwell. Its political views reminded me of the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, written in the 1910s. I cannot think of any contemporary English novel that comes anywhere close to Germinal as an unrelenting 'warts and all' portrait. Yes, there are elements of Victorian prose-style, there is a touch of melodrama, and there is a clear cut division between the 'salt of the earth' poor and the decadent and selfish bourgeois, but it is as honest a portrait as anything I have read of the time.
It is the descriptions that make this a masterpiece. But Zola also works on the characters. Many of these are flat and one-dimensional, but others, such as Etienne and Catherine and Maheuse and Moquette are beautifully complex.
It might help to know that there were twenty sous to a franc, so a sou is worth five centimes.
The title, which refers to a spring month in the French revolutionary calendar, relies on the last lines of the novel which, after so much bleakness and hardship, seem to promise a fresh start and hope for the future: "Men were springing up, a black avenging host was slowly germinating in the furrows, thrusting upwards for the harvests of future ages. And very soon their germination would crack the earth asunder." (7.6; last lines)
The central character, Etienne, is previously seen in another of Zola's twenty volume novel sequence in which he set out to write a a naturalistic and realistic mirror to society focusing on a single family.
Germinal is generally recognised as Zola's masterpiece. Its unrelenting focus on poverty reminded me of George Orwell's Road to Wigan Pier but it was written in 1885, fifty years before Orwell. Its political views reminded me of the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, written in the 1910s. I cannot think of any contemporary English novel that comes anywhere close to Germinal as an unrelenting 'warts and all' portrait. Yes, there are elements of Victorian prose-style, there is a touch of melodrama, and there is a clear cut division between the 'salt of the earth' poor and the decadent and selfish bourgeois, but it is as honest a portrait as anything I have read of the time.
It is the descriptions that make this a masterpiece. But Zola also works on the characters. Many of these are flat and one-dimensional, but others, such as Etienne and Catherine and Maheuse and Moquette are beautifully complex.
It might help to know that there were twenty sous to a franc, so a sou is worth five centimes.
cara_joy_'s review against another edition
dark
emotional
informative
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.5
vanessalakhdar's review against another edition
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
karmasbookshelf's review against another edition
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
It's a strong book: it's heavy and it leaves full of thoughts and doubts. What happens next?
It's almost cliché to say but the best way I could describe this book is 'claustrophobic', the depiction of the mines gives you absolute creeps, I had to close the book a couple of times to clear my head. Having said that, I found the characters flat at best and straight up annoying at most. Outside of his revolutionary ideas, which I find myself agreeing with, Etienne is a deeply boring character, almost serving as a place holder for his thoughts. I feel as I didn't get to know the main character, which even in a manly plot driven book I think is necessary to keep myself interested and invested in the story
It's almost cliché to say but the best way I could describe this book is 'claustrophobic', the depiction of the mines gives you absolute creeps, I had to close the book a couple of times to clear my head. Having said that, I found the characters flat at best and straight up annoying at most. Outside of his revolutionary ideas, which I find myself agreeing with, Etienne is a deeply boring character, almost serving as a place holder for his thoughts. I feel as I didn't get to know the main character, which even in a manly plot driven book I think is necessary to keep myself interested and invested in the story
csenge's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.75
osed123's review against another edition
dark
informative
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
klearlly's review against another edition
dark
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
lacommunarde's review against another edition
5.0
Magnificent! Poor Maheude! And poor Etienne (particularly when one realizes that Paris is about to go through the little 5 month Siege of Paris - basically starving Paris for 5 months, and then the Paris Commune with its bloody ending). Zola is an utterly brilliant author.
jess_mango's review against another edition
4.0
3.5 stars
Before reading this book I was 99.99% sure that I wouldn't want to be a coal miner in the 19th century. This book made me 100% sure. :)
The book is set in Northern France in the 1860's and the central characters are coal miners. We clearly see how wretched the conditions they live and work in are. The workers are basically slaves. They get paid by the mine but then have to pay the mine back for their food and other goods.
The coal miners go on strike and Zola sides with the plight of the workers vs. the rich business owners. However, everything is not all black and white...there are definite shades of gray where the owners aren't "all bad" and the workers aren't "all good". The book is weaved through with lots of social commentary regarding capitalism vs. socialism and other issues.
This was not an uplifting read. The story was bleak. The setting and story itself was more often than not dark.
I could appreciate the quality of the writing but the book didn't fully connect with me. There were a lot of meandering parts with long descriptions and passages that I found unnecessary. That and the bleak, depressing story made this one drag for me.
Before reading this book I was 99.99% sure that I wouldn't want to be a coal miner in the 19th century. This book made me 100% sure. :)
The book is set in Northern France in the 1860's and the central characters are coal miners. We clearly see how wretched the conditions they live and work in are. The workers are basically slaves. They get paid by the mine but then have to pay the mine back for their food and other goods.
The coal miners go on strike and Zola sides with the plight of the workers vs. the rich business owners. However, everything is not all black and white...there are definite shades of gray where the owners aren't "all bad" and the workers aren't "all good". The book is weaved through with lots of social commentary regarding capitalism vs. socialism and other issues.
This was not an uplifting read. The story was bleak. The setting and story itself was more often than not dark.
I could appreciate the quality of the writing but the book didn't fully connect with me. There were a lot of meandering parts with long descriptions and passages that I found unnecessary. That and the bleak, depressing story made this one drag for me.