LibriVox Forum

Fourteen! and one to go

13 has been cleaned up!

Thirteen!

A new, revitalized 11

Twelve. The story is excellent. But every time Zola veers into one of his famous descriptive passages, things don't go so well. The scene with the cheese--already laboring under the understood comparison to the "smell" of the gossiping women--collapses once he injects a second, musical met...

Ten, corrected

Section 11

Section 10. The outing to Nanterre is absolutely charming, and a welcome Calm Before the Storm. "Beautiful Lisa"'s (how ironic that name becomes!) near-murder of Marjolin is chilling. I cannot make out what seems to be Zola's gross OVERemployment of the fat/thin idea. He's already laid it ...

Section 9.

Very odd business, ripe for some doctoral candidate's dissertation. Why this vast detour into the lives of Marjolin and Cadine? And why do we oscillate then between the two of them and Claude Lantier?

Section 8 is posted.

To employ a Zolaesque metaphor, the fat is in the fire now!

Section 7

Not the best Zola. There seems to be no momentum to all this.

Section 6, ready.
And so we shift from the complacent bourgeoisie to the "revolutionaries".

Section 5, done.

With the help of the fat/thin metaphor (NOW I understand the epigraph from "Julius Caesar"!), what a ringing condemnation of the "respectable" middle class!

Followed by Section 4. What a comedy!

Section 3, up and at 'em.