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The Attack on the Mill and Other Stories
These stories are offered together for the first time in English translation. They cover a period of more than 30 years, and were originally published in French periodicals and in Russia. Zola's racy tone is faithfully rendered by Parmee whose translations have been highly acclaimed.
386 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1877
About the author
Émile Zola
2,865 books4,616 followersÉmile Zola was a prominent French novelist, journalist, and playwright widely regarded as a key figure in the development of literary naturalism. His work profoundly influenced both literature and society through its commitment to depicting reality with scientific objectivity and exploring the impact of environment and heredity on human behavior. Born and raised in France, Zola experienced early personal hardship following the death of his father, which deeply affected his understanding of social and economic struggles—a theme that would later permeate his writings.
Zola began his literary career working as a clerk for a publishing house, where he developed his skills and cultivated a passion for literature. His early novels, such as Thérèse Raquin, gained recognition for their intense psychological insight and frank depiction of human desires and moral conflicts. However, it was his monumental twenty-volume series, Les Rougon-Macquart, that established his lasting reputation. This cycle of novels offered a sweeping examination of life under the Second French Empire, portraying the lives of a family across generations and illustrating how hereditary traits and social conditions shape individuals’ destinies. The series embodies the naturalist commitment to exploring human behavior through a lens informed by emerging scientific thought.
Beyond his literary achievements, Zola was a committed social and political activist. His involvement in the Dreyfus Affair is one of the most notable examples of his dedication to justice. When Captain Alfred Dreyfus was wrongfully accused and convicted of treason, Zola published his famous open letter, J’Accuse…!, which condemned the French military and government for corruption and anti-Semitism. This act of courage led to his prosecution and temporary exile but played a crucial role in eventual justice for Dreyfus and exposed deep divisions in French society.
Zola’s personal life was marked by both stability and complexity. He married Éléonore-Alexandrine Meley, who managed much of his household affairs, and later had a long-term relationship with Jeanne Rozerot, with whom he fathered two children. Throughout his life, Zola remained an incredibly prolific writer, producing not only novels but also essays, plays, and critical works that investigated the intersections between literature, science, and society.
His legacy continues to resonate for its profound impact on literature and for his fearless commitment to social justice. Zola’s work remains essential reading for its rich narrative detail, social critique, and pioneering approach to the realistic portrayal of human life. His role in the Dreyfus Affair stands as a powerful example of the intellectual’s responsibility to speak truth to power.
Zola began his literary career working as a clerk for a publishing house, where he developed his skills and cultivated a passion for literature. His early novels, such as Thérèse Raquin, gained recognition for their intense psychological insight and frank depiction of human desires and moral conflicts. However, it was his monumental twenty-volume series, Les Rougon-Macquart, that established his lasting reputation. This cycle of novels offered a sweeping examination of life under the Second French Empire, portraying the lives of a family across generations and illustrating how hereditary traits and social conditions shape individuals’ destinies. The series embodies the naturalist commitment to exploring human behavior through a lens informed by emerging scientific thought.
Beyond his literary achievements, Zola was a committed social and political activist. His involvement in the Dreyfus Affair is one of the most notable examples of his dedication to justice. When Captain Alfred Dreyfus was wrongfully accused and convicted of treason, Zola published his famous open letter, J’Accuse…!, which condemned the French military and government for corruption and anti-Semitism. This act of courage led to his prosecution and temporary exile but played a crucial role in eventual justice for Dreyfus and exposed deep divisions in French society.
Zola’s personal life was marked by both stability and complexity. He married Éléonore-Alexandrine Meley, who managed much of his household affairs, and later had a long-term relationship with Jeanne Rozerot, with whom he fathered two children. Throughout his life, Zola remained an incredibly prolific writer, producing not only novels but also essays, plays, and critical works that investigated the intersections between literature, science, and society.
His legacy continues to resonate for its profound impact on literature and for his fearless commitment to social justice. Zola’s work remains essential reading for its rich narrative detail, social critique, and pioneering approach to the realistic portrayal of human life. His role in the Dreyfus Affair stands as a powerful example of the intellectual’s responsibility to speak truth to power.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
November 2, 2022
A powerful and heart-breaking story that captures the historical period perfectly. Poignant, heart breaking, and a book that highlights the foolishness of human nature and war.
Instead of painting the picture of patriotism and heroism during war, Emile Zola, a major figure in the political liberalisation of France, paints a story of flawed decisions and a very human story.
Ready to celebrate his daughter's wedding, the miller’s paradise in the countryside becomes the centre of bloody event during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) that will see few winners. Francoise in her attempt to save her fiancé puts both her father’s and fiancé’s life in danger and in the direct line of the forces that are prepared to execute them. To say more would certainly spoil the plot.
A powerful story, a very unheroic one but one of love and sacrifice as once again we face the bloody effects of war. Yet, since 1871 it would appear we have learned little as unjustifiable wars still rage in our world.
Brilliant for a short story
Instead of painting the picture of patriotism and heroism during war, Emile Zola, a major figure in the political liberalisation of France, paints a story of flawed decisions and a very human story.
Ready to celebrate his daughter's wedding, the miller’s paradise in the countryside becomes the centre of bloody event during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) that will see few winners. Francoise in her attempt to save her fiancé puts both her father’s and fiancé’s life in danger and in the direct line of the forces that are prepared to execute them. To say more would certainly spoil the plot.
A powerful story, a very unheroic one but one of love and sacrifice as once again we face the bloody effects of war. Yet, since 1871 it would appear we have learned little as unjustifiable wars still rage in our world.
Brilliant for a short story
June 18, 2017
Zola is famous for his novels, especially the excellent Rougon-Macquart series, so I was a little bit nervous approaching a book of his short stories. Would Zola continue to impress or would he falter in this format? In my experience novelists aren't always good short story writers and vice versa; they seem to be quite separate skills. Well, the answer is that he did not fail, and this collection is, with a few exceptions, an impressive collection of stories that is as good as anything I've read by him so far. They are similar in style and quality to the best of Chekhov's short stories.
The stories included in this volume range from a few early stories to one he wrote in 1899 during his exile in England but the bulk, and the best, of the stories were written between 1877 and 1880 for the Russian periodical Vestnik Evropy or European Messenger.
This 'Oxford University Press' (OUP) collection was published in 1984 and all the stories were translated by Douglas Parmeé. More recently it has been re-issued by 'Oneworld' as 'Dead Men Tell No Tales and Other Stories'. In that book it mentions that the collection was first published in 1969 by OUP but no mention of this is made in my OUP version; the only copyright information is for 1984. There are loads of notes at the back which includes lots of information on each story such as original title, date of publication, subsequent publications, character details etc.
So I'd like to state that Douglas Parmeé's translations here are perfect. Of course, not being able to compare them with the French I can't make a direct comparison, but they read beautifully and the translator is unobtrusive which is all that the general reader requires. My only gripe with Parmeé is with the story titles; he states that 'Zola's titles are often rather unenlightening, and the translator has ventured, here and there, to provide English versions that may be found more stimulating.' So Naïs Micoulin becomes A Flash in the Pan, La Mort d'Olivier Bécaillé becomes Dead Men Tell No Tales and so on. Why do this? Why does a story title have to describe what happens in the story? Presumably the translator wouldn't do this throughout the text so why do it with the title? This sort of thing tends to annoy me but it is the only gripe I had with the book.
The stories are roughly in chronological order and so the first five are quite early ones; they're quite playful and in a way, quite modern. In the four-page story, Death by Advertising, Zola describes a man who tries to live his life by trying every gadget and product that is advertised and to believe faithfully the claims that the advertisers make - it doesn't end well! In Rentafoil we hear about Durandeau who has found a market for ugliness; he sets up an escort agency whereby women can rent an ugly companion so that they look beautiful in comparison. The last story in the collection, The Haunted House is a sort of anti-ghost story; it's amusing but it's a bit of a 'throwaway' story.
Although these are quite fun to read, it's the rest of the stories that really impress. There's quite a range as well; a range in styles and settings. For example in two of the stories, The Way People Die and Priests and Sinners, the stories are made up of small sketches. The Way People Die starts off describing the lavish funeral of the Comte de Verteuil, then the successive funerals of a judge, a shop-owner's wife, the sickly child of a washerwoman and bricklayer, right down to the seventy year-old peasant Jean-Louis Lacour. In Priests and Sinners Zola goes the other way, from poor to rich; he starts off with a parish priest in a small village, who 'looked like a peasant in his smock', then we get Father Michelin, a confessor to several aristocratic ladies, right up to a soon-to-be cardinal busy writing theological articles.
The title story, The Attack on the Mill takes place during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, and the whole story takes place in and around Merlier's mill and shows the effects of war on civilians. Running through the story is quite a typical nineteenth century love story, where Françoise is forced to decide whether her father or her lover lives. This story was Zola's contribution to the Naturalist's anti-war story collection, Les Soirées de Médan which also included Maupassant's Boule de Suif.
Captain Burle tells the story of a womanising, gambling Charles Burle, who's a regimental paymaster who can't keep his hands off women and can't stop stealing from the army to pay for his vices. His colleague, Laguitte, eventually gets tired of covering for him and decides to take action.
A Flash in the Pan takes place in Aix-en-Provence and a smaller seaside town. It centers on the love between the lazy son of a lawyer, Frédéric, and the daughter of one of their tenants, Naïs. The set-up seems quite uninspiring, but with Zola's excellent characters and his descriptive skills he turns this into a wonderful story, with comedy, thwarted murder attempts and a cynical ending.
Dead Men Tell No Tales starts off with this sentence: 'I died on a Saturday morning at six a.m., after an illness lasting three days.' The narrator is assumed dead but he is still conscious. Ok, we're into Poe territory here with a 'live burial', but it's filtered through Zola's brain. So, either he really dies in the coffin or he escapes and returns to his wife, right?
Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder starts off in the Paris Commune and concentrates on Jacques Damour, who gets involved in fighting and politics and ends up getting arrested and deported. He's given up for dead back at home and his wife eventually re-marries. After several years he finds his way back to Paris and tries to see his wife. But what should he do? How will it end?
In my opinion, the best three stories are Coqueville on the Spree, Shellfish for Monsieur Chabre and Fair Exchange. When reading these stories the reader almost knows how it's going to end right from the first page. The pleasure in reading them, therefore, centers on how Zola is going to get us to the end, rather than what is going to happen. In the introduction Parmeé makes this point: 'it is not so much what is going to happen, as when and how is what we can expect to happen actually going to happen. Far less common is the question why something happens.'
Fair Exchange initially takes place in a small town and Zola introduces us to Ferdinand Sourdis, an amateur artist, and Adèle, the daughter of a shop-owner dealing in artist's supplies. Adèle also paints. After the death of her father, Adèle and Ferdinand marry and move to Paris where Ferdinand has an initial success with one of his paintings. He enjoys his success but finds it increasingly difficult to produce more work; he relies on Adèle more and more as she organises his life and assists in his work.
Coqueville on the Spree is an unusual story by Zola in that it's a lot of fun and there's even a happy ending - there I've spoilt it for you! The story is basically simple: Coqueville is an isolated seaside village, and there are two rival clans, the Mahés and the Floches. They argue over everything. One day, following a storm, some barrels of liqueurs are found at sea. More and more barrels are found and the inhabitants stop fishing each day and instead 'harvest' the sea of its booze. They end up having a big booze-up on the beach which ultimately brings the rival clans together. Maybe they should try this in the Middle-East.
Finally, there's Shellfish for Monsieur Chabre which is probably my favourite of the lot. Right from the character descriptions on the first page you can guess what's going to happen. So it involves the forty-five year old M. Chabre who 'had one great sorrow: he was childless' and his beautiful twenty-two year old wife of four years, Estelle. The family doctor suggests that they should go on holiday to the sea and that M. Chabre should eat loads of shellfish. They meet up with the good-looking Hector who ends up joining them on some of their excursions. Both Hector and Estelle love swimming but Chabre can't swim. So, anyway, Chabre eats loads of shellfish, Estelle and Hector go swimming and Estelle gives birth to a baby boy back in Paris. It's the journey to the end of the story that's brilliant, not the ending itself.
The stories included in this volume range from a few early stories to one he wrote in 1899 during his exile in England but the bulk, and the best, of the stories were written between 1877 and 1880 for the Russian periodical Vestnik Evropy or European Messenger.
This 'Oxford University Press' (OUP) collection was published in 1984 and all the stories were translated by Douglas Parmeé. More recently it has been re-issued by 'Oneworld' as 'Dead Men Tell No Tales and Other Stories'. In that book it mentions that the collection was first published in 1969 by OUP but no mention of this is made in my OUP version; the only copyright information is for 1984. There are loads of notes at the back which includes lots of information on each story such as original title, date of publication, subsequent publications, character details etc.
So I'd like to state that Douglas Parmeé's translations here are perfect. Of course, not being able to compare them with the French I can't make a direct comparison, but they read beautifully and the translator is unobtrusive which is all that the general reader requires. My only gripe with Parmeé is with the story titles; he states that 'Zola's titles are often rather unenlightening, and the translator has ventured, here and there, to provide English versions that may be found more stimulating.' So Naïs Micoulin becomes A Flash in the Pan, La Mort d'Olivier Bécaillé becomes Dead Men Tell No Tales and so on. Why do this? Why does a story title have to describe what happens in the story? Presumably the translator wouldn't do this throughout the text so why do it with the title? This sort of thing tends to annoy me but it is the only gripe I had with the book.
The stories are roughly in chronological order and so the first five are quite early ones; they're quite playful and in a way, quite modern. In the four-page story, Death by Advertising, Zola describes a man who tries to live his life by trying every gadget and product that is advertised and to believe faithfully the claims that the advertisers make - it doesn't end well! In Rentafoil we hear about Durandeau who has found a market for ugliness; he sets up an escort agency whereby women can rent an ugly companion so that they look beautiful in comparison. The last story in the collection, The Haunted House is a sort of anti-ghost story; it's amusing but it's a bit of a 'throwaway' story.
Although these are quite fun to read, it's the rest of the stories that really impress. There's quite a range as well; a range in styles and settings. For example in two of the stories, The Way People Die and Priests and Sinners, the stories are made up of small sketches. The Way People Die starts off describing the lavish funeral of the Comte de Verteuil, then the successive funerals of a judge, a shop-owner's wife, the sickly child of a washerwoman and bricklayer, right down to the seventy year-old peasant Jean-Louis Lacour. In Priests and Sinners Zola goes the other way, from poor to rich; he starts off with a parish priest in a small village, who 'looked like a peasant in his smock', then we get Father Michelin, a confessor to several aristocratic ladies, right up to a soon-to-be cardinal busy writing theological articles.
The title story, The Attack on the Mill takes place during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, and the whole story takes place in and around Merlier's mill and shows the effects of war on civilians. Running through the story is quite a typical nineteenth century love story, where Françoise is forced to decide whether her father or her lover lives. This story was Zola's contribution to the Naturalist's anti-war story collection, Les Soirées de Médan which also included Maupassant's Boule de Suif.
Captain Burle tells the story of a womanising, gambling Charles Burle, who's a regimental paymaster who can't keep his hands off women and can't stop stealing from the army to pay for his vices. His colleague, Laguitte, eventually gets tired of covering for him and decides to take action.
A Flash in the Pan takes place in Aix-en-Provence and a smaller seaside town. It centers on the love between the lazy son of a lawyer, Frédéric, and the daughter of one of their tenants, Naïs. The set-up seems quite uninspiring, but with Zola's excellent characters and his descriptive skills he turns this into a wonderful story, with comedy, thwarted murder attempts and a cynical ending.
Dead Men Tell No Tales starts off with this sentence: 'I died on a Saturday morning at six a.m., after an illness lasting three days.' The narrator is assumed dead but he is still conscious. Ok, we're into Poe territory here with a 'live burial', but it's filtered through Zola's brain. So, either he really dies in the coffin or he escapes and returns to his wife, right?
Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder starts off in the Paris Commune and concentrates on Jacques Damour, who gets involved in fighting and politics and ends up getting arrested and deported. He's given up for dead back at home and his wife eventually re-marries. After several years he finds his way back to Paris and tries to see his wife. But what should he do? How will it end?
In my opinion, the best three stories are Coqueville on the Spree, Shellfish for Monsieur Chabre and Fair Exchange. When reading these stories the reader almost knows how it's going to end right from the first page. The pleasure in reading them, therefore, centers on how Zola is going to get us to the end, rather than what is going to happen. In the introduction Parmeé makes this point: 'it is not so much what is going to happen, as when and how is what we can expect to happen actually going to happen. Far less common is the question why something happens.'
Fair Exchange initially takes place in a small town and Zola introduces us to Ferdinand Sourdis, an amateur artist, and Adèle, the daughter of a shop-owner dealing in artist's supplies. Adèle also paints. After the death of her father, Adèle and Ferdinand marry and move to Paris where Ferdinand has an initial success with one of his paintings. He enjoys his success but finds it increasingly difficult to produce more work; he relies on Adèle more and more as she organises his life and assists in his work.
Coqueville on the Spree is an unusual story by Zola in that it's a lot of fun and there's even a happy ending - there I've spoilt it for you! The story is basically simple: Coqueville is an isolated seaside village, and there are two rival clans, the Mahés and the Floches. They argue over everything. One day, following a storm, some barrels of liqueurs are found at sea. More and more barrels are found and the inhabitants stop fishing each day and instead 'harvest' the sea of its booze. They end up having a big booze-up on the beach which ultimately brings the rival clans together. Maybe they should try this in the Middle-East.
Finally, there's Shellfish for Monsieur Chabre which is probably my favourite of the lot. Right from the character descriptions on the first page you can guess what's going to happen. So it involves the forty-five year old M. Chabre who 'had one great sorrow: he was childless' and his beautiful twenty-two year old wife of four years, Estelle. The family doctor suggests that they should go on holiday to the sea and that M. Chabre should eat loads of shellfish. They meet up with the good-looking Hector who ends up joining them on some of their excursions. Both Hector and Estelle love swimming but Chabre can't swim. So, anyway, Chabre eats loads of shellfish, Estelle and Hector go swimming and Estelle gives birth to a baby boy back in Paris. It's the journey to the end of the story that's brilliant, not the ending itself.
May 25, 2013
Zola is my favorite author and this is a wonderful selection of his short stories. Recently translated by Douglas Parmee, these stories were originally published between 1864 and 1899, spanning most of Zola's writing career. Arranged chronologically. you can see the author's style develop as you move from one story to the next. A great introduction to Zola's writings! The stories:
"The Girl Who Loves Me" - A great description of a carnival sideshow's effects on a lonely young man.
"Rentafoil" - An amusing satire on society's attempts to package and sell beauty.
"Story of a Madman" - A woman and her lover plot to put her husband in an asylum.
"Big Michu" - Boarding school students organize a hunger strike and a simple peasant's son takes the blame.
"The Attack on the Mill" - The German Army occupies a French village and a young woman is forced to decide between the lives of her father and her lover - a wonderful love story.
"Captain Burle" - A French officer embezzles funds to support his mistresses.
"The Way People Die" - A series of brief tales showing death in different social settings.
"Coqueville on a Spree" - Two feuding families in a small town resolve their differences in a most unusual way.
"A Flash in the Pan" - Love between the classes is thwarted when a peasant girl falls in love with the son of a well-to-do lawyer, but her jealous father gets in the way.
"Dead Men Tell No Tales" - A dead man tells his tale.
"Shellfish for Monsieur Chabre" - A young woman has an affair while her aging husband gobbles shellfish to increase his virility.
"Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder" - An exiled revolutionary given up for dead returns to France searching for his wife and daughter.
"Priests and Sinners" - Like "The Way People Die," this is a series of short sketches; this time dealing with the relationship between priests and people who are thought of as sinners.
"Fair Exchange" - An excellent portrayal of the evolving power relationships in the long-term intimate relationship between a husband and wife.
"The Haunted House" - A haunting story about how rumor can color our perception of reality for the worse.
Seven pages of Explanatory Notes by the Translator, are very helpful in bringing these tales to the modern English reader.
"The Girl Who Loves Me" - A great description of a carnival sideshow's effects on a lonely young man.
"Rentafoil" - An amusing satire on society's attempts to package and sell beauty.
"Story of a Madman" - A woman and her lover plot to put her husband in an asylum.
"Big Michu" - Boarding school students organize a hunger strike and a simple peasant's son takes the blame.
"The Attack on the Mill" - The German Army occupies a French village and a young woman is forced to decide between the lives of her father and her lover - a wonderful love story.
"Captain Burle" - A French officer embezzles funds to support his mistresses.
"The Way People Die" - A series of brief tales showing death in different social settings.
"Coqueville on a Spree" - Two feuding families in a small town resolve their differences in a most unusual way.
"A Flash in the Pan" - Love between the classes is thwarted when a peasant girl falls in love with the son of a well-to-do lawyer, but her jealous father gets in the way.
"Dead Men Tell No Tales" - A dead man tells his tale.
"Shellfish for Monsieur Chabre" - A young woman has an affair while her aging husband gobbles shellfish to increase his virility.
"Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder" - An exiled revolutionary given up for dead returns to France searching for his wife and daughter.
"Priests and Sinners" - Like "The Way People Die," this is a series of short sketches; this time dealing with the relationship between priests and people who are thought of as sinners.
"Fair Exchange" - An excellent portrayal of the evolving power relationships in the long-term intimate relationship between a husband and wife.
"The Haunted House" - A haunting story about how rumor can color our perception of reality for the worse.
Seven pages of Explanatory Notes by the Translator, are very helpful in bringing these tales to the modern English reader.
January 26, 2018
"Let me tell you the story of a man killed by advertising."
Zola is a superlative writer. He was able to move back and forth from his 20-novel Les Rougons-Macquart to shorter pieces with fluidity and a different kind of fluency. His shorter works are definitely of a different flavor, funnier, slyer, and even darker, if you can imagine that:
an enterprising Parisian rent out ugly women to high society women to make the latter more beautiful; an attentive young man literally dies of advertising; a woman and her lover frame her husband for insanity; young love gets interrupted by war; an impotent husband goes to the sea to eat shellfish; an officer whores it up and ends up in a duel for his own good; two feuding families devolve into alcoholism by the seaside when a ship full of booze sinks near their little town; et cetera.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, Zola is one of literature's triumphs!
Zola is a superlative writer. He was able to move back and forth from his 20-novel Les Rougons-Macquart to shorter pieces with fluidity and a different kind of fluency. His shorter works are definitely of a different flavor, funnier, slyer, and even darker, if you can imagine that:
an enterprising Parisian rent out ugly women to high society women to make the latter more beautiful; an attentive young man literally dies of advertising; a woman and her lover frame her husband for insanity; young love gets interrupted by war; an impotent husband goes to the sea to eat shellfish; an officer whores it up and ends up in a duel for his own good; two feuding families devolve into alcoholism by the seaside when a ship full of booze sinks near their little town; et cetera.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, Zola is one of literature's triumphs!
July 13, 2019
I am a hard core Zola fan having read almost the whole of the Rougon-Macquart series of novels, but I have not read his short stories until now. It is not obvious whether Zola's considerable talents would translate into the short story format, but they do. These stories were written over a considerable time, about thirty years, and as one would expect they vary in quality. In general, they get better as they go along and Zola concentrates more and more on the telling detail. Some of the titles of the stories have been retitled by the translator, unforgivably in some ways, for instance "Jacques Damour" becomes "Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder". That title, which I am not sure whether it is meant to be ironic or not, in my opinion distorts the tale. Other title changes are equally pointless if not quite so egregious. I also did not find the introduction particularly helpful, but the translation itself is very good.
The collection of stories is very good and in some ways would serve as an easy introduction to Zola's writing, although, I am not sure that it is better than just jumping in at the deep end and reading Germinal or L'Assommoir. The collection is more than just for the Zola fan as some of his more obscure novels are. They are compelling and even at times subtle, not something that is Zola's forte normally. To me the best of the bunch is Shellfish for Monsieur Chabre, which is more than just a finely written seduction piece it has a compelling and fascinating heroine, who reminds me of someone out of Hardy, more than a typical Zola heroine. All in all it is quite good. The best works in it are better than all but about half a dozen of the best novels and the worst stuff in it is at least alright. Recommended to fans of Zola, short story readers and anyone with half decent literary taste.
The collection of stories is very good and in some ways would serve as an easy introduction to Zola's writing, although, I am not sure that it is better than just jumping in at the deep end and reading Germinal or L'Assommoir. The collection is more than just for the Zola fan as some of his more obscure novels are. They are compelling and even at times subtle, not something that is Zola's forte normally. To me the best of the bunch is Shellfish for Monsieur Chabre, which is more than just a finely written seduction piece it has a compelling and fascinating heroine, who reminds me of someone out of Hardy, more than a typical Zola heroine. All in all it is quite good. The best works in it are better than all but about half a dozen of the best novels and the worst stuff in it is at least alright. Recommended to fans of Zola, short story readers and anyone with half decent literary taste.
July 27, 2025
Most of these short stories are great, some are made worse by Zola's excellent descriptions, but he went into to much detail. Great for his novels but in short stories I like the plot to move along more. All in all a great read that is easily put down when dinner is called or the kids want dad to play with them.
December 20, 2017
Deeply impressed by the modernity of the writing and the stories.
I shall read more Zola.
I shall read more Zola.
February 13, 2020
Quaint. And old. But not like bad. Just not something I’d pick up for energy. Prefer Hardy.
December 28, 2014
This collection certainly showed a great range of voices and tone. I was not as gripped by these stories as I have been by other collections this year.
June 9, 2015
Lo leí como "Los muertos no cuentan cuentos", pero era maravilloso. Lo retomé hace poco, fue como volver a un manantial conocido.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews