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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An underrated work, May 3, 2005
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.
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Novel for Food Lovers, May 4, 1997
By A Customer
From the moment the hero appears -- about to be run down by a row of peasant carts bringing produce to market -- to his denunciation and arrest caused by the swirling jealousies and mutual hatreds of the wholesale food merchants of Paris, this book is a nonstop ode to food. Virtually every page is a food fight of the senses, with pages of sensuous descriptions of every manner of food known to France.
Set in Napoleon III's Paris, shortly after the giant Les Halles market was built on the Right Bank (it is now a giant sunken shopping mall near the Pompidou Center), THE BELLY OF PARIS is the story of an escapee from the French penal colony in Cayenne who lives with his brother, a pork butcher, and becomes a seafood inspector. In the process, he becomes a target for the discontents of the gossipy food merchants who are resentful of his left-leaning ways. He and his friends foment a pathetic attempt at a revolution that mirrors what was to become the Paris Commune years later. This is one of the early volumes in Zola's monumental Rougon-Macquart series.
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13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Like the curate's egg: good in parts, September 3, 1999
By A Customer
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".
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