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Brutal, gripping and heart wrenching, L’Assommoir (also known as The Drinking Den) chronicles the tragic downward spiral of Gervaise Macquart, a good-natured and hardworking laundress who slides into alcoholism and despair. After her lover abandons her and their two children, Gervaise marries a tin worker, Coupeau, who helps her rebuild her life. She starts her own business and the two have a daughter, Anna (the protagonist of Zola’s later novel, Nana). But their happiness is short-lived as a freak accident leaves Coupeau seriously injured, beginning the family’s fall into alcohol, desperation and violence. Disturbingly realistic, L’Assommoir is a vivid portrayal of life in late 19th-century Paris.
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Summary
Summary
Brutal, gripping and heart wrenching, L’Assommoir (also known as The Drinking Den) chronicles the tragic downward spiral of Gervaise Macquart, a good-natured and hardworking laundress who slides into alcoholism and despair. After her lover abandons her and their two children, Gervaise marries a tin worker, Coupeau, who helps her rebuild her life. She starts her own business and the two have a daughter, Anna (the protagonist of Zola’s later novel, Nana). But their happiness is short-lived as a freak accident leaves Coupeau seriously injured, beginning the family’s fall into alcohol, desperation and violence. Disturbingly realistic, L’Assommoir is a vivid portrayal of life in late 19th-century Paris.Reviews
Reviews
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Brutal and enthralling
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Brilliant narration; tragic, brutal novel. Gervaise, a woman who dreams of owning her own shop — and who succeeds for a brief idyllic period in doing so — is ultimately ground down by poverty, the envy and hatred of her neighbors, and the weakness she and her husband have for l’assommoir — the local gin shop. Zola graphically portrays a society and a universe that have no pity for those who stumble. In terms of the overall series Zola created, this one is linked, through Gervaise’s children, with Germinal, The Beast Within, and Nana.
Why read or listen to something so depressing? Because the story is beautifully written, because the characters are as real as your friends, and because reading it will increase the depths of your compassion. Many of Zola’s novels work this way, this one especially so.
Author
Author Bio: Émile Zola
Émile Zola (1840–1902), French writer and critic, was raised in a poor family at Aix-en-Provence and at age eighteen went to Paris where he worked as a clerk and a journalist before turning to writing novels. For many years he used his fiction in the service of his passion for social reform. He published many masterworks but is perhaps most famous for his series of novels called Les Rougon-Macquart, one of the chief monuments of the French naturalist movement.
Details
Details
| Available Formats : | Digital Download, CD, MP3 CD |
| Category: | Fiction/Classics |
| Runtime: | 15.76 |
| Audience: | Adult |
| Language: | English |
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