55 of 56 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Zola's Masterpiece, January 23, 2003
Germinal is generally considered the greatest of Emile Zola's twenty novel Rougon-Macquart cycle. Of these, Germinal is the most concerned with the daily life of the working poor. Set in the mid 1860's, the novel's protaganist Etienne Lantier is hungry and homeless, wandering the French countryside, looking for work. He stumbles upon village 240, the home of a coal mine, La Voreteux. He quickly gets a job in the depths of the mine, experiencing the backbreaking work of toiling hundreds of feet below the earth. He is befriended by a local family and they all lament the constant work required to earn just enough to slowly starve. Fired up by Marxist ideology, he convinces the miners to strike for a pay raise. The remainder of the novel tells the story of the strike and its effect on the workers, managers, owners and shareholders.
Zola weaves a strong plot line along with a multitude of characters. The hallmark of this novel is the wealth of people who populate the pages. The miners are not the noble poor but men and women who live day to day, cruel in some ways, generous in others. The managers are owners are not evil, greedy men but complex characters who in some ways envy the freedom of the miners from conventional morality.
As with most Zola novels, don't expect a happy ending. But the reader can expect to be transported to a world and a way of life almost unimaginable for its brutality and bleakness. Like other great works of literature, the novel explores the thoughts and actions of people who suffer the daily indignities of poverty and injustice. Germinal is different however because the thoughts and actions are not noble and the consequences of their actions are felt by all. I would strongly recommend Germinal as one of the major novels of the 19th century but one that transcends time and place. The issues evoked in the novel regarding labor versus capital are just as relevant to today's world.
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41 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Probably my favorite novel., September 28, 2001
Mind you, I've only read five of Zola's books (I'd be plowing through the rest now, if not for the bane of schoolwork...grrr), so it's possible that the man's written something even better, but it's hard to imagine how that would be possible, really.
Germinal is such an amazing, multi-faceted piece of work that it seems difficult if not impossible to encapsulate the whole thing in a paltry review. If the concept of a novel based around a coal miners' strike in nineteenth-century France sounds off-putting to you, be assured, it's much more accessible than you think. Frequently depressing it certainly is, but it's never less than gripping, and with such a dazzling array of characters and scenes, you'll be riveted throughout. Who can forget the allegorical Russian anarchist Souvarine (who I always picture as looking like Xellos from Slayers, for some reason)? The lugubriously tortured sexual longings of M Hennebeau? Or the horses who work in the mine, doomed to live a life entirely devoid of sunlight? I don't think think anyone short of Tolstoy is capable of doing animals this well. And let's not forget about the awe-inspiring closing paragraph.
Germinal is frequently a melodramatic novel, but never in a propagandizing way--while Zola's sympathies clearly lie with the miners, he is careful not to pile the whole of the blame for their living conditions on the owners, instead making most of them into sympathetic, or at least comprehensible, people. The blame lies with the entire system, and Zola's determination not to resort to simple-minded scapegoating makes the novel all the more real.
Admittedly, Zola's writing and use of imagery isn't exactly subtle (how often does he characterize the mine as a devouring maw--or words to that effect--in the first chapter alone?), but he has a rare gift for portraying large, panoramic scenes, as well as endowing smaller ones with a great deal of atmosphere (which latter talent is really more evident in Nana--also highly recommended)--his strengths are well-suited to the story he's chosen to tell, and the strong focus prevents it from meandering, as his later--somewhat comparable--novel The Earth sometimes does.
I can't recommend Germinal highly enough. If you read just one nineteenth-century French novel, you really ought to be doing more reading. But if you're that determined to limit yourself to just one, make sure that it's Germinal.
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21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A glimmer of hope for the oppressed, October 6, 1999
By A Customer
Why do we have labor laws? Why do we accept nuclear energy and the oil industry? Why did the rich countries become so prosperous? "Germinal" shows you why. Often considered Zola's greatest work, it is indeed a truly epic story skilfully blended with penetrating political and economic analysis, not least of the mixture of motives that push people to stand up for their rights or those of others. Take John Steinbeck's "The Grapes Of Wrath", multiply it by ten or twenty and you won't even come close to this book. Deeply moving, shocking, but ultimately uplifting, for in the wreckage of the miners' crushing defeat after their strike Zola, for once, offers a glimmer of hope. Better to have fought and lost than to have done nothing. The seeds of a new, fairer world have been sown. And one day........
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