Germinal

I really enjoyed the story. It makes you truly appreciate your present modern day life. Everyone should read it simply for that reason. The book was hard to read at times because of all of the technical details in the description of mine anatomy, however it really made me picture the true abhorrent working conditions that people of the mines faced at the time. We have certainly come a long way since then. Now on to the philosophies sprinkled throughout the book... A western person who didn’t grow up in a real communist country may find the idealistic language truly inspiring, revolutionary and insightful. I grew up in a communist country and I know the life and history of it. So therefore the ideology peppered through the book didn’t resonate with me in a positive way. But it is interesting to see how workers lived in those days and how far we have come.

I read this book for an ou course. If it had not been on the list there is no way I could have finished it. It is so well written that you can see smell and hear everything in it. It scared me and it upset me. I found myself sympathising with violence-not something I am used to. Would you enjoy this book? no definately not that is the wrong word. Should you read it anyway? definately! it is worth getting out of your comfort zone for. I wanted to give this very few stars for making me angry and for making me cry but it's just written so well. Just because I didn't laugh or enjoy the storyline does not alter the fact that I will forever remember this book it has challenged so many of my ideas.

Mind blowing. Fantastic

A wonderful book. one of the best I have read - not quite finished yet. It is a social history reminicent to Dickens but easier to read, though that comment is not pc! Zola said that the pen is mightier than the sword and this book is evidence of that. Why hadn't I read this before?!

Possibly not the entry-level Zola for first-time readers. The Ladies' Paradise would be better, but there is something positive in this one, lacking in much of the rest of Zola. You could finish this one and walk away with some faith in society.

A brilliant novel that depicts in vivid and painful detail the deprivation and suffering of French coal miners in the late nineteenth century. If you like Dickens, you will probably like this work by Zola.

If you're in a class, or just need to up your dose of Culture, and it's come down to a choice of Dead White Men, I'd take Zola over Melville, any day. I have some questions about this translation, however; and the quality of this binding wasn't exactly the best, either. By the end, the last few pages kept falling out of the book. On the other hand, if you're going to translate a book about coal miners in France, who better than a person named Collier? For a book as old as this one (1885, taking place in 1866) it comes across as remarkably fresh. One citizen reviewer complained of the archaic writing---indicating that they either read another edition, or don't fare well with British english. The writing in this edtion is quite modern, and very British. Guys hang with their "mates"; people are told to "Bugger off". I don't think the French translates so clearly British. It wouldn't be any better if they were calling each other "Dudes" and saying "Go F yourself". I'm not familiar with the standards of translation, but I've read other translations, of other books, most recently "Love In The Time Of Cholera", and the native language and it's poetry were much more intact. The Story takes off in the first couple of pages and never lets up. Where many writers would write up to the strike The way Celine Dion sings a song, Zola sort of slouches towards it. He illustrates the lives of his cast in rich, and often horrifying detail. He shows us where and how they live, how they sleep, and how they work in the Dante-esque conditions of 19th century French mines. And then, he switches to the lives of the Bourgeoisie (here the comfortable familes whose small fortunes derive from earlier investments in the mines, and as such, they don't work) and so does his language as it describes the warm, complacent, sunny comfort of their existence in the pays noir. When the Strike finally occurs, it happens while we're turning pages, between two parts of the book. It's already on, when we, and one of the mining share holder families finds out about it. The miners are a sad lot, and Zola doesn't glamorize them. They don't make any money in good times, and the company protects its profits in bad times by cutting their wages to starvation levels (one sandwich of bread and butter, for 10 hours underground, in back breaking, toxic conditions) and so they partake in the one thing that's available to them for free: Sex. The kids are having sex all over the book. Babies are having babies, so 8 year olds work in the mines. With all this excess labor available, and desperation so acute, it's no wonder Capitalism is harsh and exploitive. It's here that Zola and Steinbeck part ways and stare across the fence at each other. Where Steinbeck lionized his impoverished characters, and often treated them like saints and sages, Zola isn't so kind. There are no saints in this book, just sinners in varying degrees, at different stages. Zola shows the physical folly of his characters lives, and then climbs into their minds to expose their vanity, their ignorance, their complacency. In short, the miners are as responsible for the misery of their lives as the bourgeoisie. Without any forgiveness due the latter. By the end of the book, the miners have let down the reader almost as much as the share holders have screwed the miners. I see they've made a movie, and with Gerard Depardieu no less. From Zolas description, it must be hilarious to see one of France's most obese actors waddling through mine shafts that starving, stunted, fifteen year old kids can barely manage. I'll get back to you on that. Given the subject matter, and the unhappy ending (it's no spoiler, unless you came to the book without any historical knowlege of the era) a lot of people, and probably students at that, seem to think the book is sad. It isn't. That's the odd thing. Zola was writing when the first glimmer of hope for the working man could be seen on the near horizon. The story takes place twenty years earlier, when that hope was little more than a dream, at the beginning of the struggle for workers rights. While his story reflects a sense of hopeless desperation among the miners, it also reflects Zola's own idea that, eventually, the worker would have his day. And as a result, Zola spends much of the book developing his characters, examining them and their motivations; their vanity, their greed, their complacency, their beliefs one way or the other. Thus, while the most dramatic part of the book does indeed come across as every bit as dramatic as it should, much of the rest of the book is oddly quiet, about lives lived in small worlds and even smaller internal spaces. And believe me, this book, at its worst, isn't nearly as sad as Reality, where it took another eighty years from the 1860s, to see the workers finally gain something akin to parity with the bosses, and that only lasted for twenty five years or so. Now, we're right back where Zola's characters are, in the sense of realizing the importance of organization. We don't. Worse, many working folks----way too many of them retired for more than a decade, on pensions no longer available to their children or grand children----are turning against everything socialist, and favoring the working man; motivated by an inner rage against the slights of a perceived Liberal Elite; and the trumped up evils of minorities and immigrants; all of it seen through a retirement that wasn't as golden as they'd hoped, just a long slow road to the grave, pinching pennies as before. Zola had no idea it would come to this. Having recently waded half way into "Moby Dick" and stepped out for some fresh air, I would enthusiastically steer you towards Zola. So much easier, so much more interesting, and compelling, a read. I do question the quality of this translation, again, a French novel should still read like a French novel, not a British (or American) novel with French characters, in France. And, if you read it in public, those who aren't familiar with Zola will think you're so cultured, and here you are reading about fifteen year olds having sex! Vive La France! Vive La Culture!

Zola captures the hopelessness of a generation of mine workers in such a way that makes you feel as though no matter how hard they try, they will never rise above their current station in life. Etienne's growth contrasts sharply with the mine workers who will never be able to rise beyond their simple and uneducated ways. Even while rooting for them, you know that victory is impossible. Zola depicts this tragedy with such color and depth yet keeps you from despair by sketching a hope for future generations. All in all, a beautiful story.

This is one of the finest novels I have read. Coming from coal country in West Virginia, I was curious as to how Zola would handle the theme of coal mining. He does a masterful job. The translator has done a splendid job in capturing the nuances of detail and description. The chapters of the underground disaster left me gasping for air!

Unfortunately, Zola's Germinal initially came across as contrived to me. Clearly, he spent a lot of time in the mines and with the miners, but his recall of details--at least initially--felt like a third person accounting/reportage. This is in contrast to the authenticism of someone like D.H. Lawrence, who knew intimately the life of a miner, and whose depiction of that life seems more effortless. The novel ultimately becomes satisfying, however, as we get to know Etienne and his comrades, and hope for their success in their revolt against the shareholders of the mines.

My husband is making his way through all of Zola's novels, and finished this one today. His comment: It is a great novel.

The translation by Robert Lethbridge is in modern American, often substituting our colloquial expressions for the French originals. At first this can be off-putting, but the story line is so captivating I enjoyed it very much.

If it hadn't been part of my Open University syllabus, I might never have got round to reading this visceral account of a mining community and its struggle for justice and liberation in post-revolutionary France. I had read three of Zola's novels, and pretty harrowing they were too - as was this, what many consider to be his masterpiece. It made me appreciate, albeit dimly, the back-breaking work of my father, a miner in mid-twentieth-century England; whether conditions were quite as unforgiving as they are portrayed here I'll never know, since he's been dead a long time, but the desperation of a community that refuses to be crushed even as the literal and figurative mines collapse on them is palpable, and certainly made me count my blessings in my modest but comfortable abode. The account of the moral decay and regression that extreme, unremitting poverty can foster is unflinching - a few incidents described here are truly atrocious; and the jury's still out on Zola's own moral standpoint and just what he means to achieve with his "naturalist" method (in fact I'm doing an assignment on it as we speak). Character certainly gives way to events in this as in other writings of Zola, and perhaps that is the greatest lesson of his work: that even the best of us, like the idealist Etienne and the loyal-hearted Catherine, could be driven to unspeakable degradation if pushed too far. It should be required reading for anyone aspiring to a career in 'public service', the euphemism for politicians on the make. The translation is a lively one, though it contains a few suspiciously modern idioms - but still, they don't detract from the spirit of this relentless novel.