Reviews

The Sin of Abbé Mouret by Émile Zola

fake_xylophone's review against another edition

dark emotional sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

drskaninchen's review against another edition

4.0

This is the sixth book of the Rougon-Macquart series I have read. It took me a while to get into it, but when I did I couldn't stop. The visions of abbé Mouret are described wonderfully by Zola. I loved the garden of Eden episode too. Even though you come across the garden of Eden theme in many different ways (in commercials, films, etcetera), Zola managed to surprise me with an interesting spin on it. This will definitely not be the last novel of Zola I read.

_ard_nax_ela_'s review against another edition

dark sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

akashara's review against another edition

sad slow-paced

3.75

wickedcestus's review against another edition

5.0

Ok so Zola got me again! I love this guy more and more as I work my way through this series.

This one is about one of the children from the last book. He doesn't know anything that happened in that story. He has become a priest in a dilapidated chapel in the countryside. No one in his parish is religious. He tries to make them religious, but he doesn't care that much. He just wants to mentally honk off to the Virgin Mary.

Some people think the religious symbolism in this book is a bit much. I mean, it is for much of the time a retelling of a biblical story. This book would not make any sense to someone who has not read that story. However, everyone in the western world knows that story, so it works. I think it's neat. It's unique. I can appreciate that Zola has used this series to write a lot of different types of book.

I like the way this book is separated into parts. The first part introduces the main characters. At the end of Part One, something happens to one of the characters, and Part Two takes place in a dream-like world outside of the confines of Part One's reality. In Part Three, Part One's reality enters the world of Part Two, and the two worlds must reconcile each other.

I don't actually remember how the book ends! I finished this book about a month ago. That's okay. Many other parts of the book stuck with me. I will read it again someday.

landolphia's review against another edition

dark emotional medium-paced

• Strong character development? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

hardcoverhearts's review

challenging dark emotional informative sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

burritapal_1's review

challenging dark emotional 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? Yes

5.0

This novel of Zola's focuses on a priest in love, Serge Mouret, who is Torn Between the biddings of Nature and the forbiddings of the church.

For this novel, as the reader will observe, 
"Zola would provide the necessary grounding with a huge amount of preparation. He studied the bible, the Catholic missal, and the methods and teachings of the seminaries. He went to mass and made detailed notes on clerical dress and accessories, and the whole complicated choreography of the ritual."
This reader was truly impressed with the amount of knowledge that Zola possessed on writing about the plants of the Paridou.
"He studied Horticultural catalogs and visited Horticultural exhibitions to see for himself the flowers he would describe so vividly." From Introduction
We first met Serge Mouret, the protagonist, when as a young man of 17 he appears in The Conquest of Plassans. He's kind to Desiree, his intellectually disabled sister and he has a religious disposition. 
"he becomes a great favorite of the relentlessly manipulative Abbé Faujas, who is, disastrously, a lodger in the Mouret family home. Serge's mother, more and more obsessed with religion, becomes more and more obsessed with Faujas, who brutally rejects her in terms that anticipate the misogynistic Tirades of Archangias in the novel that follows." Introduction 

Brother Archangias has a violent nature. he bullies the pupils in his Christian School and he shows hatred of women . . .
" 'they have damnation in their skirts. Creatures fit for throwing on the dumgheap, with all their poisonous filth! It would be good riddance if girls were all strangled at Birth.' " Intro

Albine's uncle and guardian, who is the caretaker of the paradou (a kind of Garden of Eden), is named Jeanbernat. He is an atheist in his eighties, who is still tall and strong, standing upright.
"He allows his niece to run wild, with no education, believing in a romantic, Rousseauesque free 'development of the temperament.' " 
He is a formidable enemy of the church and all its priests.
Dr Pascal, who is Serge's uncle, plays a small part in this novel of the Rougon Macquart series. He serves in a portion of the book as narrator, letting us know the story of the Paradou: 
"....the Lord who built the Chateau in the time of Louis XV (like the Chateau of the domaine de Galice) and his beautiful lady who died there."
Serge is a priest who denies his own physicality, and abhors nature. He is obsessed with the Virgin Mary, almost idolizing her like a lover.
"The frenzy of his worship, the accompanying hysterical hallucinations, and his total neglect of his physical being lead to illness, which he sees as the result of multiple attacks on his senses: the heavy odors and overwhelming fecundity of Desiree's Farmyard, the 'fetid warmth of the rabbits and fouls, the lubricious stink of the goat, the sickly fatness of the pig.' " Intro

The end of Book One is where Serge collapses on the floor of his room in the presbytery, having pleaded with the Virgin to castrate him and save him from the torment of sexuality. In Book Two, it abruptly opens on Serge in a room where he has been lying insensate, and Albine has been tending him.
"In this new space, Albine and Serge will play the central roles in Zola's version of the Fall of Nan, a vision quite other than that given in Genesis." Intro 
Zola's descriptions of the plants and flowers in the Paridou show his Mastery of imagery. When the reader experiences through reading of the Lush Beauty of this Garden of Eden, where these two "childrens' sensuality is awakened, it's easy to visualize the scene.

In contrast with Book Two and its scenes of flowers and love and joy, happiness and cuddling, Book Three seems rather violent. Brother Archangias, while having dinner with Desiree, laLaTeuce, The Abbe in the dining room of the presbytery, begins Galloping around in a chair, doing somersaults, laying with his back and his butt against a door and climbing it with his feet, breaking plates with his nose. Albine comes to the church while the Abbé is there praying, imploring him to return to her, but like his real-life counterparts,  once he's used her, he throws her away. he jerks her around to all the Stations of the Cross, from which she recoils, afraid of the bloody scenes depicted.
She tries to bring him back from the Edge by talking to him about the "Stations of the Paridou," as it would seem, coming up with tales of how their life will be, living in paradise, with their two children and their love. He violently pushes her out of the church, but she tells him that she will wait for him every sunset by the breach in the wall of the Paridou. 
When Serge briefly regrets throwing away Albine's love, he goes at Sunset to the breach in the wall of the Paridou, where brother Archangias is sleeping, guarding the wall. Serge steps over him, and meets up with Albine, just a little ways inside. She leads him through the garden to where their love nest was, hoping to regain the sensuality of that moment. But Serge becomes angry again, and at this, Albine has had it! She tells him to get out! and starts pushing him, while he stumbles, towards the wall. Brother Archangias has woken up by this time, and he yells curses at Albine, and makes fun of Serge. 
Now comes the saddest part where Albine gathers every flower she can, and, making many trips, brings them up to her room. The room where she nursed Serge. She piles and piles flowers on the bed and flowers in every corner and every wall of the room, then lays down in the bed and suffocates from the flowers. 
The end of the book is a scene at the cemetery when Albine is being buried, while also being buried is the little kid from Rosalie and her husband. At the same time, Desiree's pig is getting butchered, and the cow gives birth to a calf. 
I Ponder what it takes to write a marvelous, beautiful novel such as this, aside from its misogynistic moments, and I can't imagine. I can barely even summon up the energy and the brain power needed to write down brief synopses, and my feelings and the connections I felt with the book and all tje others I read. 
What an author!

marionmurmure's review against another edition

reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

elisala's review against another edition

3.0

Un des Rougon-Macquart qui sort du lot lors de mon "marathon" Rougon-Macquart d'il y a désormais de nombreuses années.
Il sort du lot par un quelque chose d'un peu plus libre, d'un peu plus léger, dans le thème ; un thème presque subversif, et puis une atmosphère très sensuelle, très bien rendue, non seulement par les personnages, mais aussi par le décor environnant. Je garde ainsi une image très vive du jardin où se déroule une bonne partie de l'histoire.
Au final tout le livre est empreint d'une tristesse, une sorte de mélancolie, mais qui rajoute à l'attrait du livre, même si on a un peu envie de secouer le héros pour qu'il arrête de faire n'importe quoi. Au moins ça prouve que je suis bien rentrée dans le livre!