Customer Reviews

A Love Episode (Rougon-Macquart)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A frantic young widow seeks a doctor during the night for her sick daughter and stumbles across her next-door neighbour. Returning to thank him, she is befriended by the doctor's wife. But gradually the doctor comes to love the widow for her calm and dignity and turns away from his society hostess of a wife - with ultimately tragic consequences. A well-crafted story with short chapters and leaning heavily on character portrayal for its effect. Very untypical Zola, the novel seems to be written as a breathing space between "L'Assommoir" and "Nana" to cash in on Zola's new-found fame, avoid being typecast as a muck-racker and to show that even respectable, well-off people living in a prosperous neighbourhood and minding their own business can be waylaid and thrown into turmoil by love's passion. The story also ties up a loose end in a minor branch of the Rougon-Macquart dynasty, though the heroine ultimately receives less drastic treatment from the author than her two brothers. The impression from this book is more that of the "stiff upper lip" than the "blood and guts" you normally expect from Zola and it is probably the best of this type in the 20-novel cycle.

Chronolgically, A Love Episode (Une Page d'amour) is the 8th volume of the Rougon-Macquart series. There can be no doubt in the mind of the judicial critic that in the pages of "A Love Episode" the reader finds more of the poetical, more of the delicately artistic, more of the subtle emanation of creative and analytical genius, than in any other of Zola's works... In all literature there is nothing like the portrayal of the punishment of Helene Grandjean. Helene and little Jeanne are reversions of type. The old "neurosis," seen in earlier bran-ches of the family, reappears in these characters. Readers of the series will know where it began. Poor little Jeanne, most pathetic of creations, is a study in abnormal jealousy, a jealousy which seems to be clairvoyant, full of supernatural intuitions, turning everything to suspicion, a jealousy which blights and kills. Could the memory of those weeks of anguish fade from Helene's soul? This dying of a broken heart is not merely the figment of a poet's fancy. It has happened in real life. The coming of death, save in the case of the very aged, seems, nearly always, brutally cruel, at least to those friends who survive. (C. C. Starkweather)

zola is a beautiful writer.his descriptive passages are excellent in french or english. this translation is awful nut brown hair ample bosom. it destroys a good book.

The only reason I'm reading this book is that I'm committed to the whole series. I will survive! Beware of this edition - the typos and errors will drive you crazy. They should be embarrassed to print this and Amazon should be embarrassed to sell it!

To those who have read George Sand it would seem that the plot of "Page d'Amour/Love Episode" is more akin to George Sand's and not Zola's novels (if to disregard a somewhat heavy-handed style of writing typical of Zola). George Sand's novels, however, usually have a happy ending. There are exceptions still; for example those who have read a lot of George Sand would recall that the ending of "Indiana" is somewhat bittersweet. The ending of "Page d'Amour/Love Episode" is also bittersweet in a sense that Helene Grandjean's daughter dies, but Helene marries the man who loves her.

The story is still too trite. Even historians say that Zola, who himself called this novel "syrupy", wrote it to quiet the critics, who accused him of scavenging dirty themes in "l'Assommoir/the Drum Shop". Lastly, it is important to note that after "Page d'Amour/Love Episode" Zola went on to "scavenge" another dirty theme in the novel "Nana".