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Jan 28, 2015lukasevansherman rated this title 3.5 out of 5 stars
"Therese Raquin is the only one of Emile Zola's works outside of his novel-cycle "Les Rougon-Macquart and his polemic "J'Accuse" that is widely read. Indeed, with a few individual works from that twenty-volume cycle, it represents the height of his achievement as a novelist."-from the introduction Along with Flaubert, Balzac, and de Maussapant, the French writer Emile Zola helped pioneer what we think of as realism (which would mutate into naturalism) and lay the groundwork for the modern novel. "Therese Raquin," which has been filmed several time, is one of his best-known and most accessible books, although it originally shocked people in 1867 for its frank, non-judgmental look at adultery, murder, suicide, and the dark controlling forces of society. Not a fun read by any means, but an important one for anyone who wants to understand the development of the novel. Its plot of a woman and her lover killing her husband also forecasts film noir and hardboiled fiction, especially the books of James M. Cain.