The Sorcerer's Companion: A Guide to the Magical World of Harry Potter

Amazon.com

Harry Potter aficionados: remember when Buckbeak, Hagrid's pet Hippogriff, was put on trial by the Committee for the Disposal of Dangerous Creatures? This crazy idea was not invented by Harry Potter's creator, J.K. Rowling. In fact, from medieval times all the way up to the 19th century, animals and even insects were often charged with crimes, arrested, imprisoned, tried, convicted, and sometimes executed. Harry Potter's fantastic world of magic has its roots in true history, mythology, and folklore; father-daughter team Allan Zola Kronzek and Elizabeth Kronzek have now made this wealth of astonishing information available to Muggles in their Sorcerer's Companion. From astrology to Grindylow to reading tea leaves to witch persecution, this fascinating volume gets to the bottom of every magical mystery connected with Hogwarts. Readers learn the unusual method by which premodern Europeans protected themselves from the cry of the uprooted Mandrake, involving a loyal dog and a rope. (Professor Sprout's solution was to have her herbology students wear earmuffs). Hermione probably knew, when she was hexed by Draco Malfoy so that her teeth suddenly grew past her chin, that hexes originated in Europe. But did she know the connection between hexes and the folk magic of the Pennsylvania Dutch? For fans of the tremendously popular Harry Potter series, or anyone who is intrigued by magical lore, the Sorcerer's Companion will quickly become a true friend. (Ages 9 and older) --Emilie Coulter

Book Description

The New York Times bestseller, now fully updated to include Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Who was the real Nicholas Flamel? How did the Sorcerer’s Stone get its power? Did J. K. Rowling dream up the terrifying basilisk, the seductive veela, or the vicious grindylow? And if she didn’t, who did?

Millions of readers around the world have been enchanted by the magical world of wizardry, spells, and mythical beasts inhabited by Harry Potter and his friends. But what most readers don’t know is that there is a centuries-old trove of true history, folklore, and mythology behind Harry’s fantastic universe. Now, with The Sorcerer’s Companion, those without access to the Hogwarts Library can school themselves in the fascinating reality behind J. K. Rowling’s world of magic.

Newly updated to include Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, The Sorcerer’s Companion allows curious readers to look up anything magical from the Harry Potter books and discover a wealth of entertaining, unexpected information. Wands and wizards, boggarts and broomsticks, hippogriffs and herbology, all have astonishing histories rooted in legend, literature, or real-life events dating back hundreds or even thousands of years. Magic wands, like those sold in Rowling’s Diagon Alley, were once fashioned by Druid sorcerers out of their sacred yew trees. Love potions were first concocted in ancient Greece and Egypt. And books of spells and curses were highly popular during the Middle Ages. From Amulets to Zombies, you’ll also learn:
•how to read tea leaves
•where to find a basilisk today
•how King Frederick II of Denmark financed a war with a unicorn horn
•who the real Merlin was
•how to safely harvest mandrake root
•who wore the first invisibility cloak
•how to get rid of a goblin
•why owls were feared in the ancient world
•what really lies beyond the Veil
•the origins of our modern-day “bogeyman,” and more.

A spellbinding tour of Harry’s captivating world, The Sorcerer’s Companion is a must for every Potter aficionado’s bookshelf.

The Sorcerer's Companion has not been prepared, approved, or licensed by any person or entity that created, published, or produced the Harry Potter books or related properties.

Customer Reviews:

Magical Breif Encyclopedia.......2007-08-24

I do like the book, very interesting indeed.
Although I am still waiting for a book that talks especifically about Harry Potter's characters and sites. That it'll work , nothing like an aside book to keep cheking a quick review of a character you just don't remember in that moment, even a spell or a plant or an animal, whatever it is. Oh well.

LOVE LOVE LOVE THIS BOOK.......2007-03-20

I can't say enough about this book, I have bought a copy for every Harry Potter fan I know! This book is a must have for anyone interested in all the myths and legends behind the books. I had gotten the book from the library awhile ago and just had to own it. It is a great companion book for any Harry Potter fan! Great detail! My son has used this book on several of his school papers already...just a wonderful read!

A great companion.......2005-07-09

This book helps to explain all the different kinds of characters one encounters in the world of Harry Potter a great companion piece with the set of books.

Good beginner's mythology book.......2005-01-01

If you're expecting a "Harry Potter" book don't buy this one. If you are interested in learning about the myths that inspired Rowling, then you'll like it. In fact this book could have been written pre-1995, the only difference would be that there would be no refereces to JKR's work. (Rowling would have found it usefull in writing her stories.)

I have been studying the occult for 8 years, so not much of the information in this book was new to me. I bought it because I have been reading the Harry Potter books for 4 years, and have recognised many things in the books that closely resemble occult truths. I wanted to see someone else's take on the subject, (given the way Rowling is criticised for the occult-ness of her books).

This book would be best for those who are beginners in the area of mythology/occult teachings. Those well versed in this area will probally not find a great deal of new information in this book, but would probally still find it an amusing read. Also for those who are totally Harry obsessed (as I am).

If they come out with a new edition for the remaining books I will definitely buy it.

good read.......2004-11-12

This is a really good and accurate study of the things in harry potter.

it gives you the histroy and the background aronud some of the more mysterious subjects you come across in the harry potter series and of corse so of the more common subjects.

it even teaches you a little bit about each subject. it gives you a good explanation of arithmancy and enough info to do some basics on it.

Same with tea leaf reading.

good read and worth it.

Average customer rating:

Accurate: Captured the Spirit!
Germinal is a work of genius by Zola the master of literary naturalism
Readers of the world, unite!
From the Mines to Revolution-A Masterpiece
The best novel of the 19th Century

Germinal (Penguin Classics)
Émile Zola
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0140447423
Release Date: 2004-05-25

Book Description

The thirteenth novel in Émile Zola's great Rougon-Macquart sequence, Germinal expresses outrage at the exploitation of the many by the few, but also shows humanity's capacity for compassion and hope.

Etienne Lantier, an unemployed railway worker, is a clever but uneducated young man with a dangerous temper. Forced to take a back-breaking job at Le Voreux mine when he cannot get other work, he discovers that his fellow miners are ill, hungry, and in debt, unable to feed and clothe their families. When conditions in the mining community deteriorate even further, Lantier finds himself leading a strike that could mean starvation or salvation for all.

Customer Reviews:

Accurate: Captured the Spirit!.......2007-05-10

This was my first read of Zola, an author who is FAR too unknown in the US. He captured, fully, the essence of a labor dispute. I've been around an industrial area my whole life, and have been through many strikes, plus have been the target of those who don't like you crossing their lines. Zola brought all this to life; he told it just as it really is. Incredible!

Germinal is a work of genius by Zola the master of literary naturalism.......2006-09-27

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!

Readers of the world, unite!.......2006-09-11

Germinal is a damned good book. A page-turner. Engrossing. Illuminating, too. The proletariat/capitalist conflict is better portrayed here than in any other work of fiction I've come across. One gets a sense of the conditions--granting Zola a degree of literary embellishment--that led to trade unionism, socialism, communism, and anarchism. Zola sides with the workers, as you'd expect, but he is honest about his characters' motivations. They are presented as three-dimensional, not didactic dummies for Zola to ventriloquize through. Zola's characters are so fleshed-out, in fact, that the reader develops a rapport, an emotional investment, with them. Not all make it through the book alive and well, and this is another refreshing bit of truth from Zola. Life is full of calamity, pain, and senseless suffering, but it continues nevertheless. Zola presents this without typical Gallic pretension...a worthy achievement in and of itself. A definite classic.

From the Mines to Revolution-A Masterpiece.......2006-06-21

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.

The best novel of the 19th Century.......2006-05-02

This is ?mile Zola's undisputed masterpiece in the Rougon-Macquart novel series. In each of the novels of this series Zola sketches in honest, human detail the life of the working class of 19th Century France; in Germinal, the center of attention is the mining industry of the far north.

The story describes the experience of an ex-machinist, Etienne Lantier (who appears as such in one of the other novels) in the Voreux and other mines around the town of Montsou, situated somewhat near Valenciennes. Starving and looking for a job in a period of industrial crisis, he is introduced to the reader as he arrives at the mine. Etienne soon manages to get a job there, and gets to know the great variety of characters that make up the local mining town. But his deep-felt social activism, combined with his somewhat higher education than the local miners, sets in motion a chain of events that changes both his life and that of the reader forever.

Zola's brilliant description of the reality of the struggle between classes and the effects, positive and negative, that zealous struggle for the improvement of the world can have on individual humans in dire straits is sure to haunt the reader for a long time. The author manages to describe both the miners, in their jealousy, pride, poverty and despair, as well as the local bourgeoisie in their misguidedness, personal issues and the pressures of capitalism with a deep understanding of the human psyche. The interactions between humans under pressure is described in powerful, terse dialogues and evocative passages.

The political and social background of the miners' desperate struggle for a decent living is the general theme of the book, but Zola avoids stereotypes and never clearly takes sides for any particular political position, deftly avoiding preachiness or sentimentalism. The incredible hardship and difficulty of the miners' lives and the degree to which the main characters manage to maintain a sense of dignity is sure to move even the coldest-hearted person, but Germinal is not a Dickens work and tear-jerking is more an effect of the book's quality than the goal of the writer.

Above all, however, Zola's best work is simply an incredibly riveting, exciting, deeply moving and tremendously powerful work of fiction. Read the rise and fall of Lantier, Maheu, Bonnemort, Deneulin, Catherine, Souvarin and the other comrades, and weep.

Average customer rating:

A review of the translation
Hypnotizing
Cortesana astuta
Nana a realistic Novel
Nana

Nana (Penguin Classics)
Émile Zola
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0140442634

Book Description

Nana opens in 1867, the year of the World Fair, when Paris, thronged by a cosmopolitan elite, was a perfect target for Zola's scathing denunciation of hypocrisy and fin-de-siecle moral corruption. In this new translation, the fate of Nana--the Helen of Troy of the second Empire, and daughter
of the laundress in L'Assommoir--is now rendered in racy, stylish English.

Customer Reviews:

A review of the translation.......2007-03-06

The book is wonderful, of course. I found the "Britishism" in the translations to be a distraction: "bloody" this, "Old Chap, " Upon my word, old chap, etc."
That said, as I read more English translations from French, and Russian, (and other reviews of French to English novels) this seems to be a generic problem. I forget now which translation contained the "Blimey!" I don't know the solution, but it makes me wish again that I had learned French.
I would say, if you can find another translation of this fine novel, do so.

Hypnotizing.......2006-10-30

Zola is perhaps the best pure writer I've ever read. By this I mean the beauty and flow of his writing independent of all other considerations is unmatched. And this is in translation; he can only be better in the original French. Stunning.

Through the rise and fall of Nana's life Zola offers a beautifully drawn look at the upper and lower classes of Parisian society in the 1870s(?).

I've read 6 or so Zola novels, and this is my favorite so far.

Cortesana astuta.......2006-06-22

Nana es todas las mujeres en una sóla persona. La complejidad del mundo femenino del siglo XIX es precisamente lo que retrata la historia de esta cortesana. Nana tuvo el mundo en sus manos a punta de utilizar lo que se denominan "estrategias femeninas". En este libro no quedan bien parados ni hombres ni mujeres. Porque al fin y al cabo, las motivaciones, sin importar el género, son las mismas. Hombres y mujeres son prisioneros de su ambición. Y si se mira sin apasionamientos, Nanas existen en CANTIDAD en el mundo de hoy.

Nana a realistic Novel.......2006-06-06

Nana is a "realistic" Novel, a "must" for the studious of the late XIX Century France. The novel involves the behavior of the affluent and aristocratic of Paris in times when France was the center of the adult entertainment of the world.
Human relations are described with the usual painful detail of Zola. It is a beautiful novel, delicate but undoubtedly cruel and realistic.

Nana.......2006-04-23

I started reading this book on my 16th birthday and didnt finish it until my 17th. Obviously I read many books in between, but I think it was just hard for me to follow and get into.

After I started understanding the book a bit more as I randomly picked it up and put it down again, I fell in love with it.

First of all, Zola did an excellent job in the development of Nana's character. At first, she is a prositute who is an actress and the book begins with one of Nana's performances at the theater. Her character completely captivated me and as Zola said "even the slightest twitch of her finger can fill a man with desire".
As her story goes on, you really like Nana and respect her ambition and you highly dislike all the pathetic men who drool over her and the jealous women who bad-mouth her. When she has a difficult relationship you pity her. However, as you get closer and closer to the end you start to hate all the things she does, agree with the jealous women, feel bad for the poor men, and in turn despise her. It is only until you get closer to the end that you see that she has no heart, and all she lives for is to suck out everything materialistic from all the men who fall in love with her (which is a great many) and in turn suck out their souls. We praise Zola in the end for giving her exactly what she deserves.

Zola also does a lot of portraying of the corruption of the high class French in the mid-1800s. At first it seems very stable and good, but, like Nana, the further you get to the end the more corruption and malfunction there is.

I must say, the story really haunted me in a way after I finally finished reading it and I couldn't get my mind off it. But, does that show anything except that the book was an excellent read?

I didn't give it a full five star rating for my own reasons, mainly because the book didn't exactly suck me in and it took me a year to read. I understand it's probably because of lack of comprehension becuase in the end I couldn't put it down.

All in all, one of my favorites that I lend and recommend to all my friends. Enjoy.

Average customer rating:

Big fat novel marred by cub-scout editing
An underrated work
A Decent Novel, But Not Zola's Best
Like the curate's egg: good in parts
An excellent Zola plot, but style was not translated.

The Belly of Paris (Green Integer)
Émile Zola
Manufacturer: Green Integer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1933382724

Book Description

Little known in this country until its republication by Sun & Moon Press, The Belly of Paris is one of Emile Zola's most fascinating and exciting novels-a book of culinary treats.

Translated by Zola's original English publisher, Ernest Alfred Vizetelly.

Customer Reviews:

Big fat novel marred by cub-scout editing.......2007-02-06

Not Zola's best work by a long shot, but mostly a good read. The many pages of description, though typical of the era and of Zola's late style, end up feeling overindulgent. I read this book in small portions, and found myself frequently bored and even agrieved by the endless word-pictures of mountains of produce and hoards of marketers. It felt as though I'd hired Zola as a guide to Les Halles only to find him pesky and insistant, always tapping me on the shoulder and urging me to look at all the colors and smell all the odors and hear all the babble. The story ended up more interesting as a period piece than as literature. But it's entertaining and worth the effort.

But I owe no thanks to the editors. This edition as so full of typos, misprints, and other errors, sometimes more than one per page, that I have to question whether the translation itself is scholarly. A greater work might have sent me to the French to double check the translation, but this book just isn't worth the effort.

If you're considering where to start with Zola, look first to L'Assommoir or Therese Raquin. They are more rewarding.

An underrated work.......2005-05-03

This novel, the third in the Rougon-Macquart series, is a great example of what Zola does best. Through his minute attention to descriptive detail, he creates a setting based on historical fact, peoples it with an ensemble cast of realistic characters, and before we know it we are entangled in their lives as if we were one of the neighborhood. In this case the neighborhood is Les Halles, the huge marketplace of Paris, and the cast is composed of fish mongers, butchers, bakers, vegetable sellers, and street urchins. The two main characters are Lisa Quenu (born Lisa Macquart, daughter of Antoine Macquart), and her brother-in-law Florent. Florent, a Republican who's had some trouble with the law, seems to be an embodiment of Zola's feelings toward the revolutionary movement of the time, both positive and negative. Lisa, who runs a butcher shop with her husband, represents the moderate French citizen of the era, far more interested in the comforts and challenges of everyday life than in the events of the world outside her own immediate surroundings. While Florent entertains grandiose Utopian visions of a socialist France, politics is the last thing on Lisa's mind. Her main concern is keeping up the appearance of relative prosperity, thereby winning her family a bit of social status within the neighborhood.
Depending on which edition you read, this book is either titled The Belly of Paris or The Fat and the Thin. The second title refers to two types of people in the world. On the most obvious level it could simply refer to the division between the Haves and the Have-Nots. But Zola explores the dichotomy on a deeper level, separating mankind into those who are concerned foremost with creating a comfortable life for themselves, preoccupied only by the immediate world around them (The Fat) and those who have an outward concern toward the world, life, and humanity as a whole, living a life of sacrifice--whether deliberate or not--because of a devotion to a higher cause, whether it be political conviction, art, or some other calling (The Thin). Zola doesn't pick sides, but rather points out the strengths and foibles of both types. This novel is not a masterpiece, and it won't have the kind of profound effect on you as some of Zola's better books (Germinal, La Terre, L'Assomoir). It is an engaging read, however, and can certainly stand as a worthy sidekick alongside Zola's greatest works.

A Decent Novel, But Not Zola's Best.......2002-10-25

This novel ties the main character Flaurent with the Rougon-Macquart family through marriage of his half brother. Flaurent is a runaway convict, who lives in his half brother's shop, which is a part of the big Parisian market. Flaurent is a former school teacher, who had had no interest in politics, but once, during the coup d'etat in December of 1851, while walking along the street came under police fire and had his hands smudged in dead woman's blood. That is how he got sentenced to hard labor. There is a sharp contrast between him and most of the other characters in the novel...

The novel is somewhat draggy at times and gossips with squabbles take up lots of passages, but one must bear in mind that in the Rougon-Macquart epic Zola was trying to create the broadest possible picture of the French society under Napoleon III. That is why, besides the Parisian market, the epic narrates about: big shops defeating small ones ("Au Bonheur des dames/Ladies Paradise"), miners ("Germinal"), the stock exchange ("Argent/Money"), etc.

Like the curate's egg: good in parts.......1999-09-03

Zola is a great author and any of his stuff is worth reading. This book breaks new ground in its portrayal of the lives of the "little people" of Paris, its detailed descriptions of food and, most of all, its use of a city district - rather than human beings - as its main character. Zola himself had great affection for it. You feel his nostalgia for his difficult early days in the capital. But ultimately the book doesn't quite gell. The famous descriptions, while being jewels in themselves, actually get in the way of the action. The plot could have been more sharply focused and, perhaps the most curious thing of all, the main human character, Florent, is only a member by marriage of the Rougon-Macquart family which the cycle of novels is about. The "real" member of the family, Lisa, has a remarkably peripheral role. Also, the book could have been made a lot shorter. But it is still rewarding for the reader because, after dealing with provincial intrigue and the capital's fat cats in his first two novels, Zola takes his first stab at portraying the people that were ultimately to make his reputation: the "lower orders".

An excellent Zola plot, but style was not translated........1999-03-11

The plot for the "Belly" is excellent for those who appreciate Zola's subtle twists of fates and corruptible society. Many books by Zola have been amply translated with little lost of the style incorporated by Zola. However, in painting the markets of Paris, Zola incorporates a style similar to literary landscaping utilized by James F. Cooper (highly detailed). The translation does not flow as an artist brush on a canvas, it becomes tedious at times leaving me to skim over rather quickly, which is rare. Overall, it was worth reading, but not worth going to pains to get to it.

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Paul Cezanne, Letters
Paul Cezanne
Manufacturer: Da Capo
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0306806304

Haiku U: From Aristotle to Zola, 100 Great Books in 17 Syllables

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Silly and funny, but only for a minute.
Haiku Who? Haiku U!
I Think That I Shall Never See A Haiku as Funny as These Be
Sublimely Ridiculous
Fun with classics

Haiku U: From Aristotle to Zola, 100 Great Books in 17 Syllables
David M. Bader
Manufacturer: Gotham
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1592401287

Book Description

Take a hilarious crash course in literature—just three pithy lines—from a bestselling haiku humorist.

Why spend weeks slogging through The Iliad when you could just read the haiku? From Homer to Faulkner to Lao Tzu, the Great Books are now within the reach of even the shortest attention spans. Show off your literary prowess at cocktail parties with minimal prep time, thanks to the author of the popular Haikus for Jews.

In the sixteenth century, Zen monks in Japan developed the haiku, a poem consisting of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables. Little did they know that their ancient art form was destined to become a handy tool for today's time-crunched Western reader!

Reducing eyestrain and deforestation, Haiku U. distills dialogue and plot, capturing the essence of our favorite literary classics, seventeen syllables at time:

Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past:
Tea-soaked madeleine—
a childhood recalled. I had
brownies like that once.

Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre:
O woe! His mad wife—
in the attic! Had they but
lived together first.

Just in time for graduation, Haiku U. gives the gift of an entire literary canon, packed into one hilarious gem.

Customer Reviews:

Silly and funny, but only for a minute........2007-08-27

The problem with this book is the fact that most of the pieces they have Haikus for are obscure. You truly need to be an English major and a History major just to recognize the titles. Sure, I laughed, but they got old quick. Guess it's just the nature of the Haiku. And again, not recognizing half of them (as I'm an English major only) made it hard to "get the joke."

Haiku Who? Haiku U!.......2007-07-21

This is a fantastic book.

The work is delightful----very, very good---
hard work well done

I Think That I Shall Never See A Haiku as Funny as These Be.......2006-12-26

The books this tells of
Classics of literary
Minds, with laugh tracks too.

Here is your gift sweet
Under the tree at Christmas
Oh, snort that way please.

Synopsis of books
written in haiku verses
worthy of a look

Well certainly it's a 100 Haiku book that I'd leave out in a waiting room if I had a waiting room, or put in a basket with goodies for a friend in the hospital or have in my purse when going in for another medical test....because its very funny. Classics are described in briefest form.
I loved Kafka's The Metamorphosis:
"What have I become?"
Uncertain, Gregor Samsa
puts out feelers.

How about the Kama Sutra:
Advise for those in
a difficult position
First, be flexible.

Or Shaw's Saint Joan
Strange girl. Hears voices.
But, by Jove, even in death
she lights up a room.

Lots of laughs and since I've read the 100 classics I feel relatively reinforced that I'm remaining in a literary elite..ha ha.If you want a very funny little book to give for a nice present, perfect. I'm the recipient of this one and enjoying that my daughter spotted it.

Sublimely Ridiculous.......2005-06-20

It seems absurd to try to summarize massive, difficult books in 17-syllables, but that's part of what makes Bader's attempt so hilarious. Some of the haiku are are silly, some are witty, and some really do capture the style and import of the books on which they're based. Almost all made me smile or laugh. It's fun to see how the author tackles each "great book" and there are some nice insights amidst the punch lines. I highly recommend this to anyone who enjoys books.

Fun with classics.......2005-06-06

Definitly on the "fluff reading" side, this book did make me laugh - and while some of the entries are pretty crude and/or punny, many do poke fun at more subtle aspects of the author's style or the book's reputation. [Others are just going for the laugh, but hey, it's a humor book.] One of my favorites is the entry on Alcott's Little Women; it's pithy, a tad mean-spirited, and very, very funny!

The Masterpiece (Oxford World's Classics)

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YThe Masterpiece
Superb
Bohemian Life during the Second Empire
Not quite a masterpiece, but close
Sacrifice on the altar of canvas

The Masterpiece (Oxford World's Classics)
Émile Zola , and Roger Pearson
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0192839632

Book Description

The Masterpiece is the most autobiographical of the twenty novels in Zola's Rougon-Macquart series. Set in the 1860s and 1870s, it provides a unique insight into his career as a writer and his relationship with Cezanne, a friend since their schooldays in Aix-en-Provence. It also presents a well-documented account of the turbulent Bohemian world in which the Impressionists came to prominence despite the conservatism of the Academy and the ridicule of the general public.

Customer Reviews:

YThe Masterpiece.......2007-03-09

An easy and enjoyable read. Vividly evokes the atmosphere of late-19th century bohemia in Paris,

Superb.......2007-01-11

Given that Zola lived through the whole period of when the Impressionists turned the Salon's on their heads this is almost a biographical piece. For the various characters Zola merely drew from his friends that he would frequent the cafes and bars with. The lead character, Claude, is primarily based on Manet and Cezanne - both of which wouldn't forgive him doing so. Zola wasn't too enamoured with the impressionist and post-impressionist movements, this attitude he uses to great effect when depicting the derision with which the artists work was met. The opening piece which Claude has displayed in the Salon is in effect Manet's "Le Dejeuner Sur l'herbe" (1963).
The book opens with Claude finding a woman drenched on his doorstep, Christine. She has just arrived in Paris and through one thing and another becomes lost and shelters from the rain in Claude's doorway. She is the impetus for the figure in his painting. The story unfolds with their romance, Claude trying to get his artwork accepted by the art intelligensia, succumbing to the desire to paint THE painting, etc.
A number of characters share the stage, again most likely based on artisans that Zola knew: architects, artists, writers, critics.
The book conveys quite well what it must have been for them all struggling to get a toehold and make an impression on the Paris art scene.
The tone of the book is somewhat bleak but Zola captures the Paris of the late 1800's well. I've never been to Paris but for those that have, the book is replete with names of various streets and districts across the city.
This was the first Zola novel I've read. Being an artist this book obviously struck a chord with me. It is well written and I'd certainly recommend it to anyone who enjoys art, particularly from this period.

Bohemian Life during the Second Empire.......2007-01-08

It is an interesting study of the painter's tormented soul. It is hardly the heredity that made Claude Launtier the way he was, because we know from the novel "l'Assomoir/the Drum Shop" where he was coming from, but rather the decadent environment of the Second Empire. The novel abounds with examples of grotesque and tasteless art trends at that time, not only in painting, but in sculpture and literature as well. An interesting thing is that this is the novel with a character whom Zola modeled after himself, namely the writer Pierre Sandoz, whose Spanish ancestry alludes to Zola's foreign (Italian-Greek) ancestry. The interesting thing happens on Claude's funeral, where only two of his relatives show up; their names are not reveiled, but one can easily figure out from the description that they were Sidonie Rougon from "La Cur(e')e/the Kill" and Octave Mouret from "Pot-Bouille/Pot Lock" and "Au Bonheur des Dammes/The Ladies' Delight". The fact that Octave, unlike Sidone, stayed throughout the funeral process of the relative he hardly knew and showed his gratitude to all the funeral presentees, who knew Claude intimately, is a vivid display of his diplomatic skills, that enabled him to become the owner of a large store.

Not quite a masterpiece, but close.......2005-05-04

L'Oeuvre (aka The Masterpiece) tells the story of Claude Lantier, a gifted but unorthodox artist scratching out a bohemian existence in Paris. Claude's innovative painting style is years ahead of its time. It frustrates him that he is not getting the acceptance from the cultural establishment that he feels he deserves. Determined to create a masterpiece that will earn acclaim in the annual Paris salon exhibition, he becomes obsessed with his art, abandoning his friends, his family, and his sanity.
This is the 14th book in Zola's Rougon-Macquart series, and one of Zola's most autobiographical novels. Claude is a surrogate for Zola's childhood friend Cézanne, and Claude's best friend Pierre Sandoz stands in for the author himself. Zola vividly depicts the bohemian lifestyle of his young adulthood in Paris. Claude, Sandoz, and their gang of artist friends struggle to make their fortunes as painters, writers, sculptors. They enjoy each other's camaraderie, encouraging and challenging one another over drinks in a cafe where they debate the meaning and value of art. The reader can't help but share in the excitement of their contagious determination to change the world. As an artist myself, I found Zola's vivid description of the annual salon exhibition--the submission process, the back room politics governing the selection of works, the opening day festivities--particularly fascinating. As the young men grow up, they drift apart somewhat and begin to lead more settled, adult lives. Claude's love interest, Christine, takes on a larger role in his life, and becomes an equally prominent character in the novel. Zola delves deeply into the dynamics of Claude's marriage, and the toll his art takes on the relationship.
The least interesting scenes of the book are the extensive descriptions of the "masterpiece" itself. The specifics of the work don't add much to our understanding of the artist's obsession. Though this book engages the reader from the beginning, it falters towards the end as it becomes more and more divorced from reality. In order to prove a point about the intrinsic inseparability of art and artist, Zola exaggerates Claude's compulsion until it defies believability. Despite these few complaints, overall this is an excellent novel and a great window into the artistic world of Paris at a time when exciting changes took place. Zola fans will find it a valuable read, as will anyone interested in the art world of turn-of-the-century (last century, that is) France.

Sacrifice on the altar of canvas.......2004-11-29

"The Masterpiece" is, on the one hand, Emile Zola's depiction of Paris's community of avant garde artists in the 1860s and 1870s, but more thematically it is the story of a man who believes passionately in his unorthodox artistic vision and gives everything he's got to realize his "masterpiece" only to get nothing, not even the self-satisfaction of completion, in return. This is the situation of Claude Lantier, Zola's protagonist, a demon of the palette who is so obsessed with the perfection of his art that his wife, who has chosen to suffer poverty with him, laments that she is only his mistress, that he is truly married to the painted women on his canvases.

Claude's temperamental, dour personality is based loosely on that of Zola's own friend Paul Cezanne, a pioneering postimpressionist who achieved a level of fame and respect nobody in Zola's time could have foreseen, one which Claude is not destined to attain. Indeed, his efforts to forge a new style of painting conflicts with the conventional sensibilities of bourgeois Paris and the eponymous Salon, apparently the sole arbiters of the city's artistic taste. He is increasingly frustrated, but ever more determined, by the ridicule directed by the public at large towards his harshly rendered paintings, displayed in the rejects' gallery. "We are the future!...the day will come when we'll kill their Salon stone dead," Claude vows to his circle of sympathetic friends.

Friends are what Claude needs. His two boyhood chums--Pierre Sandoz, a novelist supposed to represent Zola himself, and Louis Dubuche, an architecture student--become financially successful in very different ways (Sandoz by writing a popular series of Zola-esque novels about members of a Parisian family in various strata of society, Dubuche by marrying a sickly heiress), while Claude labors obscurely in an austere apartment, living on a meager stipend from a generous benefactor and making a little extra cash by selling some of his less objectionable paintings to a dealer. He has another friend who is his antithesis of a sort, a traditional painter of genteel portraits named Fagerolles, who wins the money and even the critical acclaim that Claude seeks.

One of the novel's major elements is the intense and beautifully imagined love affair between Claude and a girl named Christine whom he meets on the street one rainy night. Initially his radical art horrifies her, but she easily accustoms herself to it, even modeling for him. Their cohabitation produces a son they name Jacques, whose deformity and retardation seem grotesque implications of their neglect of him. It is not revealing too much to say that Jacques dies at twelve, for it is indicative of Claude's peculiarly callous state of mind that the sight of the dead boy inspires him to complete another canvas--the most attention he has paid to his son in years.

Zola is not the best of the great French novelists of the nineteenth century, but he is arguably the easiest to read and understand; and he is certainly original, having made a conscientious effort to set his style apart from that of his forebears Hugo and Balzac and providing the foundation for the new realism of the twentieth century as practiced by Americans like Frank Norris and Theodore Dreiser. Zola's style, and that of his proteges, is characterized by what seems to be a necessary irony--that a writer who was so successful could be so morbidly fascinated with failure.

The Ladies' Paradise (Oxford World's Classics)

Average customer rating:

Classic novel for this century
Under the Wheels of the Juggernaut
The Ladies Paradise
Amazing insight into modern life-essential reading
Nothing New Under The Sun ? Re-Read The Novel

The Ladies' Paradise (Oxford World's Classics)
Émile Zola
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0192836021

Book Description

The Ladies' Paradise (Au Bonheur des Dames) recounts the spectacular development of the modern department store in late nineteenth century Paris. The store is a symbol of capitalism, of the modern city, and of the bourgeois family; it is emblematic of consumer culture and the changes in sexual attitudes and class relations taking place at the end of the century. Octave Mouret, the store's owner-manager, masterfully exploits the desires of his female customers. In his private life as much as in business he is the great seducer. But when he falls in love with the innocent Denise Baudu, he discovers she is the only one of the salesgirls who refuses to be commodified. This new translation of the eleventh book in the Rougon-Macquart cycle captures the spirit of one of Zola's greatest novels of the modern city.

Customer Reviews:

Classic novel for this century.......2006-04-13

The Ladies Paradise written in the nineteenth century rings true of today's consumerism. Emile Zola examines in this socialistic novel the effects of consumerism on customers and employees. The customers who are women are drawn to the items that are displayed on the tables. Octave Mouret, the storeowner, knows what women desire and sets forth to use it to bring in profits. The lace, stockings, velvet are feminine fabrics that entice women to spend money, even if they don't have it.

As a retail employee, I have dealt with customers who don't have the money to buy the items but want to get it. I am a customer who buys what is displayed because I think it is going to be an investment. I can relate to small stores like Uncle Baudu's. Businesses like his struggle to stay afloat amongst corporate expansion. They entice clients with their sales and bargains--things that I look for when I shop. Small stores can provide what the big stores don't have. One way or the other, the consumer can get some sort of balance. Working at both a community store and a corporate store, one thing that matters most to customers is service. Customers want to be treated with respect and they expect sales associate to be enthused and answer their questions; even if it is trivial.

Denise Baudu, a simple country girl, arrives in Paris to get a job at her uncle's drapery shop. To her disappointment he doesn't have a job for her because his store is losing customers to the Ladies Paradise. The mall provides goods that are cheaper than the small shops and have a selection of fabrics not only from the mother country, but imported from Asia. He suggests to his niece that she get a job there.

The store fascinates her but she does feel some betrayal towards her uncle. Her uncle's business, along with the small stores, are struggling to stay afloat. With the expansion of the mall, these stores are forced to close because they can't compete with them. Uncle Baudu's hopes of his business staying for the long haul are shattered.

Denise is at first, shy and awkward. She is the target of cruel and malicious slander from the employees including assistant buyer Madame Aurelie. Zola unfolds the lives of the sales employees. The money they make in retail isn't sufficient to support them. The women take to prostitution. Claire has three men supporting her material needs. Pauline befriends Denise and suggests that she get herself a lover to support her financially. Denise doesn't take that advice because it is not in her interest to be a prostitute. She is determined to keep herself and her family together without falling apart which makes the women envious of her.

The novel is centered around an actual person Aristide Boucicaut who founded Le Bon Marche which remains today at the center of Parisian culture. Denise is believed to be the model of his wife Marguerite. Zola puts into a social perspective that exists til this day.

Under the Wheels of the Juggernaut.......2006-02-06

THE LADIES' PARADISE is a sequel to POT LUCK (POT-BUILLE), which I read last year. Both have Octave Mouret as a central character. In the earlier novel, he was a young salesman on the make, both in his profession and with the young women in his apartment building. At the end of POT LUCK, he marries the owner of a successful drapery establishment. At the start of PARADISE, his wife has died; and Octave has entered on an expansion program from drapery into a department store named the Ladies' Paradise that threatens all the other shopkeepers selling clothing and accessories in the area.

Enter Denise Baudu, a country girl from Normandy, who moves to Paris with her two brothers after one of them has gotten in trouble back home. Her uncle runs a store called Au Vieil Elbeuf, selling drapery and flannels, but is unable to give her room or a job because business is threatened by the presence of the Ladies' Paradise across the street. Denise finds a job at the Paradise at the risk of angering her relatives.

Salesgirls at the Paradise live in a dormitory on the top floor of the department store. Room and board is part of the job, plus a token wage and commissions on sales over quota. Little does Denise know she had entered into a whirlwind of gossip and backbiting. She is made fun of by her fellow workers, but Mouret resists getting rid of her because he is drawn to her. At one point, however, two of Mouret's "spies" in management come upon Denise and a young salesman from her region who has sheepishly fallen in love with her and kisses her hand as head axe-wielder Bourdoncle watches. Denise is promptly dismissed.

As Denise finds another position in a less profitable store than the Paradise, the focus turns more to Mouret, who did not know of her dismissal. Mouret plans a large-scale expansion of the store and calls upon Baron Hartman (in real life, Baron Haussmann) to allow him frontage on the new boulevard being cut through the neighborhood.

One day, Mouret runs into Denise on the street and asks her to consider returning to the Paradise, which is just as well as the store where Denise had started to work was going under. To sweeten the offer, Mouret makes her an assistant buyer in the new children's wear department. With her enhanced status, Denise is now winning admiration from her co-workers, though some backbiters remain. In the meantime, Mouret's passion for her is growing -- despite Denise not encouraging it in any way.

There are several set pieces in the novel which are a feature of Zola's fiction. They come under the heading of giant mechanisms that grind people down. In GERMINAL, it was a coal mine; in POT LUCK, an apartment building; in HUMAN BEAST, railroads; and in THE BELLY OF PARIS, the food market at Les Halles. In every Zola novel, there are scenes showing off some giant mechanism at work crushing people under it like the wheels of a Juggernaut. In PARADISE, these scenes are highly successful sales which show a crush of frenetically spending customers and overwhelmed sales clerks as Mouret keeps "pushing the envelope" of what is possible in the apparel business. Even wealthy shoppers who came "just to look" are caught up in the frenzy and leave the store having committed themselves to buy more than what they could afford.

The owners of neighboring shops feel that the Paradise is like a hungry beast that strives to devour their businesses and put them out in the street. Which is exactly what happens. Denise's cousin Genevieve dies of consumption after her lover Colomban -- the main hope of Au Vieil Elbeuf -- runs away to chase a slutty Paradise shopgirl who is one of Mouret's cast-offs, and who doesn't even want him. Aunt Baudu follows her daughter soon after. When as the result of a series of sharp moves, Mouret buys their properties, the shopkeepers are evicted; and Uncle Baudu goes to a nursing home, completely dazed and broken.

Eventually, Denise and Mouret do hook up, but on Denise's terms. The novel ends as they announce their upcoming marriage.

I have found that the ten or so Zola novels I have read have been of a uniform high quality, such that I have difficulty recommending one over the other (though I have a particular fondness for NANA). THE LADIES' PARADISE is an excellent read and paints a fascinating picture of life in the emerging Paris department stores of the late 19th century.

The Ladies Paradise.......2004-12-08

After reading the book for an art class I was suprized to find out that I actually enjoyed the book, it had quite a twist to the department store/love story. I think Zola's description of the scenes were wonderful and helped me use my inmagination better. I would reccomend this book to anyone who likes learning about Paris bourgeous life and the mechanical system of the department stores. Definitly a good read.

Amazing insight into modern life-essential reading.......2004-05-24

any one who has started a business or has worked in a business should read this book. It clearly outlines all marketing principles, sales psychology and the benefits of being in distribution rather then production. Amazing. Grow your mind and read.

Nothing New Under The Sun ? Re-Read The Novel.......2003-05-10

With his Rougon-Macquart series, Emile Zola established the family saga. He put into naturalistic prose and photographic narrative the tales of a family and how their lives are affected by their surroundings. In L'Assomoir, he focused on the lives of the Provencals, those who live in the French countryside, whose lives may appear peaceful and orderly but might not be at a closer look. In Nana, he wrote about the world of the courtesan or high class prostitute operating in the beauty and sex-obscessed French culture of Paris. In "Au Bonheur Des Dames" (The Lady's Paradise) Zola exposes the capitalism and consumer culture of fashion, as expressed in the sales at the department stores.

It was the time of Karl Marx, a time when conservative elements came into conflict with those of individual expression and equal rights. Previously, Emile Zola's novels were bleak, Dickensian and depressing, making a cynical social commentary that progress and idealism is stifled under staunch older generations of Republican power (in this case the French Second Empire under Louis Napoleon III). He conveyed so much pain and suffering in "Germinal" about the coal mine workers in rural France. Like John Steinbeck of the 19th century, Emile Zola immersed himself in what he wrote, treating people as humanly real as possible, touching a chord to so many for his unabashed truths.

In The Ladies Paradise (the title refers to the name of the high class department store in downtown Paris), Zola portrays the fetish and profitable business of women's fashion. Octave Mouret, who at fist comes off as a money-loving, greedy, corporate seducer learns the value of progress and the rights of the individual. Where as he had always dominated women, manipulating them to buy his endless carrousel of hats, silks, gowns and shoes, he cannot win the affections of the newcomer sales girls Denise.

Denis eyes become our eyes as we see into the sexist world of consumer capitalism. Even today, this holds true. Women are encouraged, enforced and expected to be beautiful and attractive, with 0 size dresses, with fashionable tastes and so forth. Those who cannot meet society's self-imposed ideals of beauty crack under the pressure, becoming anorexic, anxious and sick. Super models, department stores, fashion magazines and the latest trends to look like Britney Spears (and behave just as shallow and air-headed) is the way to happiness they say. Emile Zola completely transports you to Paris of the 1870's and 1880's a time when the world seemed to be losing its better values. Is it still losing its values ? Only through advocating women's rights, individual expression, equality, and less stifling elements in society are we truly to be happy.

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Therese Raquin

Therese Raquin

A great read!

A soon to be made Gerard Butler movie?

A Gripping Story, I Couldn't Put It Down!

Therese Raquin (Penguin Classics)
Ãmile Zola
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0140449442
Release Date: 2005-02-22

Book Description

In a dingy apartment on the Passage du Pont-Neuf in Paris, Thérèse Raquin is trapped in a loveless marriage to her sickly cousin, Camille. The numbing tedium of her life is suddenly shattered when she embarks on a turbulent affair with her husband's earthy friend Laurent, but their animal passion for each other soon compels the lovers to commit a crime that will haunt them forever. Thérèse Raquin caused a scandal when it appeared in 1867 and brought its twenty-seven-year-old author a notoriety that followed him throughout his life. Zola's novel is not only an uninhibited portrayal of adultery, madness, and ghostly revenge, but also a devastating exploration of the darkest aspects of human existence.

Customer Reviews:

Therese Raquin.......2007-01-09

This is very interesting and different. The story moves at a good pace and it is worth reading. I will probably purchase other stories by Emile Zola

Therese Raquin.......2006-12-10

From the opening page, we are aware that this will be a dark work. 'Above the glazed roof the wall rises towards the sky,' writes Zola, 'black and coarsely rendered, as if covered with leprous sores and zigzagged with scars.'

A small household is described. We have Camille, a sickly, mothered, placid boy. As he becomes older, his mother's protective nature remains as strong as it was when he was a child. He is plied with medicines and 'adoring devotion', such that 'His growth had been stunted, so that he remained small and sickly looking; the movement of his skinny limbs were slow and tired.' Camille is presented as a wholly unattractive young man, with his ignorance 'just one more weakness in him.'

And then we have Therese Raquin. She was given to Camille's mother by his uncle when she was two, and has remained in Madame Raquin's household ever since. Therese has suffered the medicinal ministrations of Camille's mother, and because of this, has developed a quiet, introspective, intense demeanour. 'she developed a habit of speaking in an undertone, walking about the house without making any noise, and sitting silent and motionless on a chair with a vacant look in her eyes.'

This is an unhappy household. Or, perhaps, because everyone is so concerned with repressing any spark of feeling or emotion, it is a dead house that just happens to still be living. Camille is too ignorant and sick to have a personality beyond the studied egotism of a man who has grown up with a dominating, too-concerned mother, while Therese is a blank piece of paper, purposely unwritten upon. When her twenty-first birthday arrives, Madame Raquin informs Therese that she is to marry Camille. Therese accepts the decision, with all that changes of her life being she sleeps in Camille's bed and not her own. All else remains the same.

But soon an idea enters into Camille's head. He has always wanted to work in an office, the idea makes him 'pink with pleasure'. Against his mother's wishes, they move to Paris, where he finds a job working for the railway. Very quickly, life settles for everyone and time, as it does, plods along.

Thursday evenings become a social occasion for the family. Camille invites a colleague from work and his mother, a retired policeman she knew in Vernon, for a weekly game of dominoes. A few others arrive, and another routine is added to that of the Raquin's. Here, Zola is quite clear in his disdain for the evenings, 'After each game the players would argue for two or three minutes, then the dismal silence would descend again, interrupted only by more clicking.'

We are still near the very beginning of the novel. What Zola is doing now is to put all of the pieces into place - much like a game of dominoes - before adding the final character. A well-developed sense of drudgery, boredom and inevitability lies heavily across the text. We can quite comfortably imagine these characters continuing their lives in much the same manner until they are dead, and happily at that. What we do not want is for their life to become our own.

One day, Camille bumps into an old friend, Laurent. Camille invites his friend to Thursday's festivities, an invitation Laurent readily accepts.

When Therese lays eyes upon Laurent, she is floored. He seems, when compared to the colourless Camille, a real man, red-blooded and active. He has passions - he wishes to be a painter. He has emotions - he hates his father. He has desires - he speaks openly of painting naked women, and admiring their curves.

Over time, Laurent and Therese develop a clandestine relationship, meeting and making love under the nose of Camille and Madame Raquin, coming together in Therese' bed. Her husband and mother-in-law are shown to be so docile and unsuspecting that we can fully believe Therese capable of getting away with such activities, in their home.

From what we have read so far, Zola has written a reasonably commonly themed novel. We have the wife who is unappreciated and dreams of a love worthy of her lust; we have the inconsiderate, uncaring husband; we have the oblivious, hyper-affectionate mother. It would be easy to assume that Zola is spinning a fable such that finding and keeping love is more important than remaining within the shackles of a loveless marriage.

But hold on. Zola is far more clever than that. The passion Laurent and Therese share is shown as animalistic and obsessive; theirs is not the pure, passionate love we might expect. Therese declares, 'I love you, I have done since the day Camille first pushed you into the shop. You may not respect me, because I gave myself to you all at once, everything...Truly, I don't know how it happened. I am proud, I'm impetuous too, and I felt like hitting you that first day, when you kissed me and threw me to the floor here in this bedroom...'. But Laurent, too, is equally afflicted with lust, '...the regular satisfaction of his desires had given him sharp, imperative new appetites. He no longer felt the least unease when embracing his mistress, but sought her embrace with the obstinacy of a starving animal.'. Both Lauren and Therese show the negative aspects of secret, furtive lust - they are not in love, they are animals, tethered to one another with chains of desire and deceit.

It becomes clear that Camille must die for their relationship to progress beyond mere lust and into the love that they feel they deserve. He is dispatched with relative haste, and the novel proper begins.

Guilt, remorse and obsession form the remainder of the piece. Zola is clinical in his dissection of his character's psyche. It is as though he has laid out their mind on an operating table, and carefully removes a slice of personality for the purpose of analysis and understanding. No thought, no desire, no regret is left untouched. It is perhaps predictable that they would suffer from guilt following the murder of a man who, while timid and boring, was ultimately good, but Zola makes the focus of the novel something much greater than mere regret. He does not question or lay judgement, rather he presents the thoughts and feelings of these two people as they descend through the psychological depths of what they have done.

The novel is unrelentingly bleak. Chapter after chapter, the characters suffer their hearts and mind being torn apart. Zola slips the word 'insanity' into the text a few times, and we know he is giving us a clear clue. What would happen if two normal people commit an abnormal, horrible act? Zola pushes the limit of our understanding as far as he is able.

The peripheral characters exist to further the darkness of Laurent and Therese. It is quite clear that their function is to serve the primary characters, and not to exist as people in their own right. Perhaps with a lesser author this would be a problem, but because Zola possesses such psychological acuteness, we allow it. The Thursday night domino games continue, purely because the unending stretch of sameness is precisely what is tearing the lovers apart. They becomes married so that Zola can show us that when the price for our desire is too great, we no longer wish to possess it. And so on, and so on. They fall in and out of debauchery, violence, hatred, remorse and guilt, all so that Zola can analyse the workings of two minds that were once normal, but have become diseased.

Moving away from the psychological aspects of the novel for a moment, it is worth mentioning that Zola also has a tremendous gift for description and mood. Throughout the nineteenth century, Paris boasted a morgue, which was open to the public for inspection. On rows of gray slabs lay the bodies of the recently deceased, with a wall of clear glass separating the living and the dead. There was no such thing as refrigeration at the time, so as the days progressed, the bodies would putrefy and rot as they waited to be identified. Laurent, at an early stage of his guilt, visits the morgue daily, waiting to see Camille's drowned corpse. And when he does, Zola provides us with this breathtaking description, 'Camille was a revolting sight. He had been in the way for a fortnight. His face still looked firm and stiff; his features had been preserved, only the skin had taken on a yellowish, muddy hue. The head, thin, bony, and slightly puffy, was grimacing; it was at a slight angle, the hair was plastered against the temples, and the eyelids were up, revealing the globular whites of the eyes; the lips were twisted down at one corner in a horrible sneer; the blackish tip of the tongue was poking out between the white teeth.' And on it continues. Macabre? Certainly. But Zola's eye for description makes this a powerful scene.

Therese Raquin is a short novel. There is no space for side plots, or avenues of digression. According to Zola, 'I simply carried out on two living bodies the same examination that surgeons perform on corpses.' What we have is an exploration of the darker parts of our psyche in brevity, a bleak early masterpiece.

A great read!.......2006-07-11

I originally bought this book because my favorite actor, Gerard Butler, was scheduled to make a movie from it. I was pleasantly surprised by how good the book is. I knew it was translated from French and I thought it would probably be a hard read. I found it to be very interesting, even though there is no dialog in the book. It was very well written and extremely interesting. The descriptions made me feel like I was in the story and feeling what the characters felt. I must say that these are very dysfunctional people, but the story is good. This is not the type of book I would normally read, but I would recommend it to anyone.

A soon to be made Gerard Butler movie?.......2006-06-28

I bought this book and read it when I found out that Gerard Butler (The Phantom in Webber's Phantom of the Opera) might play Laurent. The role of the earthy womanizer and lay-about is perfect for his overtly sexy movie persona. The story is a good old-fashioned read and took me back to that time and place in Paris when passions rule and death is a lover's only hope for freedom.

I read it because of Gerry but will read more Zola because his writing reminds me of some of my other favorite books by the Brontes, Austin, and Flaubert.

A Gripping Story, I Couldn't Put It Down!.......2006-04-25

Therese Raquin pulled me right into the story. I couldn't put it down, I had to find out what was going to happen next. It was destined to be a classic.
The story is about a young woman named Therese Raquin, who is unhappily married to her sickly, weak cousin Camille. As a child Therese was adopted by Madam Raquin. Camille was her sick son, who she kept close watch over and spoiled with home-made medicines and warm blankets. Camille was always fond of Therese and insisted that she take the medicne before he did (Even though she was never sick). Madam Raquin decided to arrange for the two to one day marry because she feared that there would be no one to take care of Camille once she was gone. Therese and Camille wed once they were 21. Madam Raquin owned a shop that Therese helped her run, and Camille insisted on taking a job as a clerk because he was bored with staying at home. One day Camille ran into his old friend from childhood, Laurent. Laurent is a strong, handsom man, unlike Camille who is small, puny, and and ugly. Therese is immediatley infatuated with Laurent and soon falls in love with him. Laurent is a lazy ladiesman who has landed a job as a clerk at the same company as Camille after failing as an artist. Laurent finds Therese to be ugly and boring because of her constant silence, but he yearns for the company of a woman and sees Therese as an easy woman for him to seduce. He decides to become her lover right under Camille's nose. Madam Raquin considers Laurent a son, Camille considers him a brother, and Therese is crazy about him, so he has no problems arranging meetings for he and Therese to spend a few hours together. Laurent becomes amazed by Therese's lively spirit and activity in the bedroom and quickly falls under her spell. Crazy in love with one another, Therese and Laurent murder Camille in order to be together. For more than two years after Camille's murder, They avoid any intimacy with one another in order to not look suspicious. For those two years They are haunted by the memories of that terrible night and seem to be haunted by Camille himself. Convinced that once they are together again the hauntings will stop, Therese makes herself ill. Madam Raquin, still heartbroken over her son's death, becomes concerned. She believes that Therese's illness is cause by her sadness over Camille. She becomes convinced that Therese needs a man and arranges for her to marry Laurent. Finally, Laurent and Therese are together, but the haunting of Camille only gets worse. For many nights the couple is unable to sleep and are unable to go near each other. Their frustration turns into hate and they begin to abuse one another and blame one other for Camille's death. All the while Madam Raquin falls ill and becomes an invaid, unable to speak or move. Therese and Laurent decide to take care of her because having her in the house means they do not have to be alone with one another. Madam Raquin becomes a witness to the horrible abuse that Laurent and Therese do to one another. They accidentally let their secret slip in front of her while having one of their daily fights. Unable to speak or move to tell anyone, she refuses to let herself die until she sees Therese and Laurent pay for what they did.
This story is one worth reading. The tragic story of two people in love, turned against one another in the middle of a plot to be together. Its a true classic and a must read.

Leukocyte and Stromal Cell Molecules: The CD Markers

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Leukocyte and Stromal Cell Molecules: The CD Markers
Heddy Zola , Bernadette Swart , Ian Nicholson , and Elena Voss
Manufacturer: Wiley
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Immunology | Basic Science | Medicine | Subjects | Books

General | Education & Training | Medicine | Subjects | Books

General | Medicine | Subjects | Books

Anatomy | Biological Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
ASIN: 0471701327

Book Description

This unique reference summarizes the structure and function of nearly 600 known leukocyte cell surface molecules and their potential utility as diagnostic and therapeutic targets.

Leukocyte and Stromal Cell Molecules: The CD Markers offers comprehensive coverage of all known CD molecules based on the results of the latest Human Leukocyte Differentiation Antigen (HLDA) Workshops. It begins with an historical introduction, followed by a concise summary of the structure, function, and applications in research, diagnosis and therapy. Next, overviews for each section discuss latest developments, methodologies, and conclusions. The core chapters then offer one-page CD summaries in a standardized format. The summaries present salient features for each molecule, including its structure (accompanied by a diagram), cell and tissue distribution, function, clinical applications, available reagents, and sources for additional information. A CD-ROM with complete proceedings of the Workshop accompanies the book.

This reference is essential for immunologists, haematologists, pathologists, and clinicians. It is also of use for biologists, technicians, professionals in the diagnostic and research reagents industry, and those in diagnostic laboratories.

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