Germinal (Penguin Classics) by Émile Zola Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Germinal (Penguin Classics)
Book Review: From the Mines to Revolution-A Masterpiece
Summary: 5 Stars
As an aspiring author of regional fiction ("Suomalaiset: People of the Marsh" ISBN 0972005064)who was raised on liberal politics amidst the boom and bust of Minnesota's iron mines and timber industry, "Germinal's" featured protagonist, Etienne Lantier, strikes a chord with me. There is much about the American labor movement and the plight of American workers to be found in Etienne's story. Though conditions in our factories, mines, and in our forests have markedly improved since the days of children working the coal fields of West Virginia and the iron mines of the Mesabi Iron Range, Zola's prose and his social observations about wealth, capital, and the exploitation of the common man by those in power rings true in 21st century America. A beautifully translated work, succinctly direct, wonderfully cast, with prose that makes you sigh. One of my ten all time favorite novels.
Book Review: Germinal
Summary: 5 Stars
A french classic.
I am a transplant European and introduced to this masterpiece in literature study.
Zola is a master and it is one of my favs. You will need a comfortable chair, good lighting and time. Let yourself get swept away into the mid 1800 century to endure the political & social drama the writer is so known for.
Zola was a gutsy writer/journalist in his time and is well investing in. There are other books written by him that are well worth reading. Each in its own addresses social issues. This book expresses the outrage of exploitation of humanity.
Book Review: Germinal is a work of genius by Zola the master of literary naturalism
Summary: 5 Stars
Germinal was the name of a new month (Feb.-March) created by the leaders of the French Revolution. Zola's novel is given this title. The novel is set in the 1860s dealing with the brutal, harsh, amoral, poverty stricken, violent and cruel world of a French mining town whose name is
"240.
The main character of the novel is Etienne Lantier who is a member of a family featuring in several of Zola's novels in his Roquet-Macquart series dealing with two families charted by the brilliant novelist.
During the novel the reader will become engrossed by the families who toil deep under the surface of the earth. The mine is a symbol of Moloch the rapacious idol who gorges itself on human flesh, lives and love.
The novel is not for the prudish. In its many pages you will be exposed to sex in all its varieties; scatological language; several murders; genital mutilation; several horrible deaths and a strike. You will even see cruelty to animals written with such heartbreaking realism that you will cry over the deaths of the horses Trumpet and Battle and the rabbit
Poland.
You will meet various political and social theories from Marxism to nihilism expressed through the eloquent voices of the characters. You will be invited into the tragic home of the Maheu family and discover there the unforgettable character of La Maheu the indomitable earth mother and her suffering and prepubescent daughter who falls in love with the stranger Etienne. Catherine and her two lovers Chaval and Etienne are indelibly printed in the mind's eye of this reviewer. Miners trapped deep within the earth in a disaster instigated by the anarchist Souvarine lead to scenes which are horrific in their impact.
Emile Zola was a reformer whose novel is a classic which is also a page turner. Each page bristles with his rage at injustice, cruelty and the clash between the classes in France.
What would Zola have thought of the bloody twentieth century of revolution in Russia, two horrible world wars and now in our own century the hell of Middle Eastern warfare and terrorism.?
Germinal reads as if it was written last week since it is alive with all the human emotions. It is one of the best books ever written and will always live. Vive la France! Vive Emile Zola!
Book Review: Germinal, the Tancock translation best of three
Summary: 5 Stars
There are three really good translations of Emile Zola's Germinal. I have read all three and believe all of them have their merits. The 1996 Collier translation, published by Oxford World Classics, is brilliant; however, in saying that, it is very British. The Collier translation, Germinal (Oxford World's Classics), does flow extremely well and, if you don't mind the numerous Britishisms in the translation, you will love this edition. The 2004 Penguin translation by Roger Pearson,Germinal (Penguin Classics), is also brilliant; however, there are numerous editing errors in the text. The translation, again, brilliant, but the editing is horrid. For me, the 1954 translation by Leonard Tancock and published by Penguin, Germinal (Penguin Classics), is absolutely brilliant, and it seems to be more appropriate for the time in which it was written. However, in saying all this, any of these three editions will be excellent reads for anyone interested in Zola.Book Review: Haunting, Amazing
Summary: 5 Stars
This was such a wonderful and engrossing story that I couldn't put it down and had to get through all 524 pages in two days. I already knew I loved Emile Zola from "The Dram Shop" and "Nana". But this certainly deserves to be hailed as his great masterpiece. I was so caught up in the plight of these miners that I couldn't tear myself away. It was very strange, I'd be doing something else but my mind would be on 19th Century miners in Northern France! How many girls are at the supermarket worrying about that?
Although the book takes place so long ago, it still has resonance and relevance today (which is shameful), and not just in the poorer countries, but within wealthy ones. I don't think wage poverty has ever been so powerfully depicted. The miners live enslaved in generational poverty, which results in undernourishment, disease, and the inability to cling to any dignity or self-respect.
Promiscuity, hunger, and suffering are evoked vividly for readers, and the wretchedness of the miners just increased our affection for them and we share all their emotions, which constantly change: resignation at a slavish, animal like existance; anger and fury at the wealthy, invisible shareholders who grow richer and richer at their lives of leisure while generations of children are fed to the mines to die early deaths and live wretched lives, and admiration that they manage to keep any familial affection amongst so much deprivation.
Zola does an incredible job of juxtaposing the self-indulgent lives of the financially well-off, who are content to let miners starve while they feel self-righteous about giving them paltry handouts while they live off what is essentially slave labor. It's pretty easy to see how the people would be caught up in a socialist fervor, and we feel the contempt the miners do at these useless leeches of society who look down their noses at people dying from dangerous fumes and unsafe working conditions, malnutrition and overwork.
The story centers around a fatal strike by the miners, lead by the young Etienne Lantier, son of Gervaise, the alcoholic from "The Dram Shop". It was truly horrifying and almost unbearable to read the way that the Company held their cruel and unwavering resolve to not give the miners a living wage in the face of so much grim suffering, and understandable that ultimately the miners become violent and depraved. For more than two months they have almost no food and some starve to death, and I as a reader was haunted as I remembered that although this book is "fiction", episodes just like these really happened.
I won't give away the details of who dies and who kills whom and who has an affair with whom, because the edition I had tells you in the introduction, and I really think it's better to find out while reading the novel and not have it given away. I will say there are many genuinely vivid, touching, evocative scenes, which despite their high drama are believable, in many cases based on actual events.
This is a great novel from an artistic standpoint, but I also think we would all do well to learn about these kinds of workers' struggles from a century and a half ago, because we still have a lot to learn from them in a world where the gap between rich and poor grows ever wider.