We acknowledge and remind and warn you that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure. The complete review 's Review :. The Kill is a novel of a city being reinvented, and an unsettled society in rapidly changing times. It is a novel of excess and of scheming, with people as means to ends and personal relationships centred solely on personal satisfaction: what have you done for me lately -- or, possibly: what can you do to me tomorrow -- the deciding factor even among friends, family, and lovers.
The setting is the French Second Empire Paris is being rebuilt, and there is a construction boom. Many houses are also being torn down, to make way for the new thoroughfares and building projects, the government reimbursing the owners for their losses -- a system ripe for abuse, as speculators purchase property they know will be claimed, and then make inflated demands for compensation.
One such opportunist is Aristide Saccard, described as coming to the French capital soon after the coup d'etat of Aristide Saccard swooped down on Paris immediately after the Second of December with the keen instincts of a bird of prey capable of smelling a battlefield from a long way off.
The post his brother arranges for him -- an assistant surveyor -- initially seems disappointing, but Aristide soon realises that it's a solid springboard for him to embark on an entrepreneurial career of his own. He collects information and cultivates friendships and soon has everything he needs except a stake i. When Aristide comes to Paris he has a wife and two children, a son and a daughter. The boy, Maxime, remains at school in the provinces, but wife and daughter accompany Aristide -- though he is more focussed on getting ahead then anything else.
If it wasn't clear immediately what kind of man he is, confirmation certainly comes at his wife's deathbed, when he agrees to marry a young woman he has never seen who has gotten herself in a bit of a trouble and whose family is willing to pay a hundred thousand francs to avoid scandal.
Aristide, on the other hand, couldn't care less: his wife brings money -- and, usefully, she also has some of her own, which he is sure he can swindle from her one way or another eventually. A few years after the marriage, Maxime comes to live with his father and step-mother.
Still thirteen -- and she just twenty-one -- he is an effeminate little charmer. Among the many very good scenes is the one in which they finally come together -- remarkable in its build up, and then even more so in its consummation, as the actual sexual act which would surely be the drawn-out centrepiece of such a section in any contemporary fiction is entirely passed over. These are extremely shallow characters. Les Rougon-Macquart 2 The Kill. Conceived as a representation of the uncontrollable 'appetites' unleashed by the Second Empire and the transformation of the city by Baron Haussmann, the novel combines into a single, powerful vision the twin themes of lust for money and lust for pleasure.
Classics France Fiction French Literature More details. More than half of Zola's novels were part of a set of 20 books collectively known as Les Rougon-Macquart. Set in France's Second Empire, the series traces the "environmental" influences of violence, alcohol and prostitution which became more prevalent during the second wave of the Industrial Revolution.
The series examines two branches of a family: the respectable that is, legitimate Rougons and the disreputable illegitimate Macquarts for five generations. As he described his plans for the series, "I want to portray, at the outset of a century of liberty and truth, a family that cannot restrain itself in its rush to possess all the good things that progress is making available and is derailed by its own momentum, the fatal convulsions that accompany the birth of a new world.
He became a figurehead among the literary bourgeoisie and organized cultural dinners with Guy de Maupassant, Joris-Karl Huysmans and other writers at his luxurious villa in Medan near Paris after Germinal in , then the three 'cities', Lourdes in , Rome in and Paris in , established Zola as a successful author. The self-proclaimed leader of French naturalism, Zola's works inspired operas such as those of Gustave Charpentier, notably Louise in the s.
His works, inspired by the concepts of heredity Claude Bernard , social manichaeism and idealistic socialism, resonate with those of Nadar, Manet and subsequently Flaubert. Search review text. Richard on hiatus. The book cycle features members and branches of the Rougon and Marquart families introduced to us in the first book of the series - The Fortune Of The Rougons.
All books can be read as stand alone novels. The rule of Louis-Napoleon was a time of fresh thinking, populism and a massive modernisation of France. The railways system was vastly improved and much of Paris was rebuilt. During this period, whole swathes of Paris were bought up to be redeveloped. This manic land speculation led to complicated deals, fraudulent practices and all sorts of lying and cheating in the stampede by those trying to get rich.
Zola, in The Kill, shines a light on this corruption and the obscene wealth that ensues. Aristide Rougon, introduced to us in the first book, a fickle, unpleasant character with absolutely no moral compass, moves with his family to Paris. There he becomes very rich, very quick by way of property speculation and a myriad of very suspect business dealings.
He changes his name and soon takes on a beautiful new wife. His vain, indolent but quick witted son Maxime, becomes a darling of society. The language in The Kill is heavily lyrical, dense and sensuous in places. There is a sexual dimension to much of the imagery that suits the story of shocking forbidden love and excess. There is also a gritty reality and unflinching objectivity in the writing, unlike contemporaries such as Dickens. The quality of the books vary and The Kill is not one of the most talked about in the series but despite some slow and overwritten sections, I enjoyed it greatly and am keen to read the next instalment.
Ahmad Sharabiani. It deals with property speculation and the lives of the extremely wealthy Nouveau riche of the Second French Empire, against the backdrop of Baron Haussmann's reconstruction of Paris in the 's and 's. It is made clear very early on that these are staggeringly wealthy characters not subject to the cares faced by the public; they arrive at their mansion and spend hours being dressed by their servants prior to hosting a banquet attended by some of the richest people in Paris.
There seems to be almost no continuity between this scene and the end of the previous novel, until the second chapter begins and Zola reveals that this opulent scene takes place almost fourteen years later.
Zola continues his "social study" with Aristide Rougon, now Saccard in Paris. If you see a Google Drive link instead of source url, means that the file witch you will get after approval is just a summary of original book or the file has been already removed. The Masterpiece is the tragic story of Claude Lantier, an ambitious and talented young artist from the provinces who has come to conquer Paris and is conquered by the flaws in his own genius.
While his boyhood friend Pierre Sandoz becomes a successful novelist, Claude's originality is mocked at the Salon and turns gradually into a doomed obsession with one great canvas. Life - in the form of his model and wife Christine and their deformed child Jacques - is sacrificed on the altar of Art.
The Masterpiece is the most autobiographical of the twenty novels in Zola's Rougon-Macquart series.
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