The Kill

The second in Zola's Rougon-Macquart twenty volume series, and the first to be set in Paris concerns Aristide Rougon (who during this novel changes his last name to Saccard - and is the focus of a later volume, Money, already reviewed here), his arrival in Paris from Plassans, and his gradual rise as a a property speculator, during Haussmann's transformation of the city under Napoleon III.His first wife dies, he then marries a much younger woman for a large dowery and to bring respectability to the lovely Renee, and with this dowry starts his long climb to fame and fortune. Along the way his estranged, and slightly effeminate, son comes to live with him and eventually has an affair with the neurotic Renee.Zola's poetic descriptions of life and death during the Second Empire and it's lusts for money and pleasure are a delight and his finely drawn characters excite. And being a 19th century novel, it's never going to have a happy ending, but there is none of the sentimentality of, say, a Dickens.Even though it is only the second of twenty, already his style is firmly cemented for the following stories, and I've not come across a bad one yet!RECOMMENDED.

"La Curée" is a hunting term in French that can't be easily translated. It's the moment when all the hounds and hunters have trapped or treed their prey and are closing in for "The Kill". The bloodthirtsy hounds of Zola's "La Curée" are the unscrupulous capitalist speculators of the French Second Empire (1852-1870) of Louis Napoleon, whose greed and decadence are unleashed by the first great "urban renewal" of modern times, the expropriation of huge swathes of Paris for the constructing of the boulevards. "The Kill" is a novel of Passions, of the lust for money and of sexual lust, but the most fiery Passion of all is Zola's own passionate hatred of the Second Empire, which he portrays as morally and aesthetically rotten to the core.Was there ever a novel before "The Kill" in which every character is completely odious? Even in Zola's previous novel - The Fortune of the Rougons - there were a couple of sympathetic innocents, but the three principal actors of "The Kill" are loathsome from start to finish. Aristide Saccard is the son of the Pierre Rougon who pounced on Napoleon III's coup d'etat to 'lift' the Rougons from poverty in that first novel. Maxime is Aristide's effete son by his first wife in the village of Plassans, whom we met in "The Fortune" but whose death in "The Kill" affords Aristide his first opportunity to swindle his way to wealth in Paris. Renée is Aristide's second, much younger wife, whose dowry provides that opportunity. The novel "The Kill" is a tightly choreographed ballet, a 'pas de trois' of deception and seduction danced by these three despicable people, each one aiming to extract as much 'blood' from the other two as possible. In the latter chapters, in fact, explicit mention is made of "Phedre", that classic of the French theater, a drama of incestuous desire and suicide. One could read Zola's "La Curée" as a bold trope on the story of Phedre.What pleasure can there be in reading a novel about three equally hateful characters in a menage a trois? You won't be able, dear reader, to take sides. The pleasure is all in the art of Zola's writing, and perhaps in the fervor of his historical denunciation of the Second Empire, which does seem surprisingly to resemble the state of things in "The World's Only Superpower" of 2010. The promiscuity and extravagance of Zola's Paris are not unmatched in today's America."The Kill" is an architectural masterpiece, a novel as precisely constructed as the Eiffel Tower and as ornate as the façade of any church or chateau in France. The first chapter, indeed, is a kind of extravagant façade of description, page after page of opulence -- clothing, carriages, furniture, palatial dwellings, all the trappings of excess and insatiable lust that swirl around Renée and Maxime (stepmother & stepson) like objects of Bacchanalia tossed in a tornado. Later in the novel, when the 'inevitable' occurs between Maxime and Renée, Zola portrays their ecstasy with the same brilliant indirection, describing the sensuous, narcotic luxury of Renée's bedroom rather than the sordid physical actions that occur in it. One can be seduced -- over-stimulated -- by Zola's powers of description. I read "La Curée" in French, by the way, and I relished this first chapter so much as poetic language that I found myself reading it aloud, something I rarely do.There are twenty novels in Zola's "Rougon-Macquart" series, his epic depiction of French society and history through the interconnected lives of the descendants of two families from the Provençal village of Plassans. I've read and reviewed a couple of the later novels out of order, specifically "The Debacle" and "The Masterpiece". Eventually I may have to challenge Master Zola on a certain kind of double standard of sexual morality. In "The Kill", he is implacable in his condemnation of dissolute, decadent sexual frenzy among the "upper" classes of wealth and power. In "The Masterpiece", portraying the Bohemian lifestyle of the Impressionist painters and writers, he is far less minatory, far more indulgent. But hey, don't I feel the same ambivalence myself? Oddly enough, the original serialization of "La Curée" was interrupted in 1871 - censored by the government - ostensibly for its "immorality", and Zola was widely perceived as a 'prurient' writer, especially by British and American readers. In fact, in "The Kill" at least, he's as censorious as Savonarola or Jonathan Edwards.This Oxford edition translation by Brian Nelson is the first since the end of the 19th C. I looked it over in a bookstore. It seems quite readable and representative of Zola's craft. I don't think you need to have read "The Fortune of the Rougons" or any other of Zola's books to appreciate "The Kill". A little knowledge of French history, and a tourist's visual impression of Paris, would facilitate your appreciation, but even those things are not necessary. "The Kill" is an awfully good novel.

This is a very fast-paced book. It nearly gives the illusion of reading a summary. It offers sort of a conundrum to me in that it seems that it is full of details but leaves many things unexplained.This is my fourth book in Zola's Rougon-Macquart twenty-volume series. It is not my favorite --that being "The Belly of Paris"-- but it is of major significance. It is historical fiction but mirrors the realities of Napoleon III's regime leading up to the fall of Paris in 1871. It contains all of the sexual deviance, greed, gluttony and immorality associated with Paris during this period. It also provides much insight into the massive remodeling of Paris during the 1860s by Baron Haussmann at the astonishing cost of 2,500,000,000 francs.Again, I don't think that this s Zola's best work, but it is well worth the time and effort if you have an interest in the history of Paris during this fascinating period.

Very enjoyable - (I am biased though, being a great fan of Zola) - this is a good translation of one of his rarer works. Quick service via Amazon.

This is my 3rd read of the Rougon - Maquart cycle and the second book that Zola wrote in order.It is a whirl of vicious greed and debauchery as we follow Aristide Saccard (Rougon), his wife Renee and son Maxime. The two themes of a lust for money and a lust for pleasure are played out in the Grand Boulevards of Paris and we see how the Bourgeois set lived their lives for hedonistic pleasure and how one of Europe’s greatest cities was built.I found it fascinating and spent a lot of time looking up the places mentioned so I can walk Zola’s Paris in a few weeks time.The characters were well realised, full to the brim with emotion, greed, weakness, madness and lust. We can gorge ourselves on detailed descriptions of sumptuous houses, fashion and gossip which pepper the narrative; a version of Hardy’s descriptions of nature in some ways but not as gentle!I really love to hate these characters in this series so far. Aristide, speculates to accumulate; falsely raising the prices of property to enable himself to make huge sums of money when they are sold to the state to demolish to make way for the new Paris. He is conniving, greedy and grasping - a Rougon, through and through; little caring for who he stands on, including his wife Renee. Renee, is all about pleasure and I can imagine the pages of this book were shocking when first read in the 19th century, incest (with her stepson) and nakedness must have been very eyebrow raising. She is depicted as a real woman with real desires and sexuality, not some buttoned up piece of Victoriana. I did feel sorry for her though and I felt that as the main female character in the book, she came off the worst, a bit of a morality tale almost (don’t behave like this ladies, or you know what will happen). The men are allowed to sail on through, doing what they like, but woe betide the woman who does! Maxime, although not as awful as Aristide, is a bit of a chip off the old block, and although I think he did love Renee, when it came to it, he was in thrall to money just like his father.It’s a great read, my favourite so far. The Rougons really are not a family I would wish to be part of that’s for sure!Next up is more Aristide in Money.