Zola seems to have borrowed a kind of effect, from poetry, with this effort: there are large technicolor blocks of description here, monumental scenic prose-backdrops, illustrated right down to the feel of the grit on the sidewalk. Sense of place is everything here. There is barely room to wedge the particulars of character and story into the gaps between atmosphere & scene... And like the painters of his era, he's also intrigued at the gradations wrought by time of day and weather change; at the way the Light rewrites the story, every bit as much as a plot change will. Take the fish market of Les Halles, for example :

“…..When the baskets had been set out, it looked to Florent as if a shoal of fish had run aground on the pavement, still quivering, in pearly pink, milky white, and bloody coral, all the soft, sheeny hues of the sea.

The seaweed that lies on the ocean bed where the mysteries of the deep lie sleeping had jumbled everything into the sweep of the net: cod, haddock, flounder, plaice, dabs, and other sorts of common fish in dirty grey spotted with white; conger eels, huge snake-like creatures with small, black eyes and muddy bluish skins, so slimy that they seemed to be still alive and gliding along; broad flat skate, their pale underbellies edged with a soft red, their superb backs, bumpy with vertebrae, marbled to the very tips of the bones in their fins, in sulphur-red patches cut across by stripes of Florentine bronze, a somber assortment of colours from filthy toad to poisonous flower; dogfish, with hideous round heads, gaping mouths like Chinese idols, and short fins like bats’ wings, monsters who doubtless kept guard over the treasures of the ocean grottoes. Then there were the finer fish, displayed individually on wicker trays: salmon, gleaming like chased silver, whose very scale seemed to have been exquisitely chiseled on highly polished metal; mullet, with larger scales and coarser markings; huge turbot and brill, their scales pure white and closely knit like curdled milk; tuna fish, smooth and glossy, like bags of black leather; and rounded bass, with gaping mouths, as if some outsize spirit, at the moment of death, had forced its way out of the surprised creatures’ bodies. Everywhere there were soles, grey or pale yellow, heaped in pairs; sand eels, thin and stiff, like shavings of pewter; herrings, slightly twisted, with bleeding gills showing on their silver-worked skins; fat bream, tinged with crimson; golden mackerel, their backs stained with greenish brown markings, their sides shimmering like mother-of-pearl; and pink gurnet with white bellies, placed with their heads together in the middle of the baskets and their tails fanned out, so that they seemed like strange flowers, in a bloom of pearly white and brilliant scarlet." ..... Emile Zola 1873

Only one installment of Zola's grand project Les Rougon-Macquart, "The Belly Of Paris" is a walk-thru history in lots of ways. And a strikingly visceral presentation of Les Halles in Paris in the latter part of the Nineteenth Century, pulsing with tradition but lunging toward the Modern with every day that passes.

[A footnote here is the film Le Sang des Bêtes which cinematically renders much the same territory some seventy-five years later; it is impossible to believe that director Georges Franju was not channeling Zola when he filmed this record in 1949. A must-see, on the level of L'Age d'Or or Entr'acte, in this viewer's opinion.]

Do both-- see The Blood Of The Beasts and read the Zola ... bon appetit.

A novel of voracious middle-class appetites, The Belly of Paris pits the Fat against the Thin (the Haves against the Have-Nots) against the backdrop of the enormous food markets, Les Halles. When Florent returns from political exile he is astonished and displaced by the transformation of Paris by Haussmann under the Second Empire.

Loaded with descriptions of foodstuffs, the third novel in the Rougon-Macquart series chronicles the transfer, preparation, and selling of a smorgasbord of French fare. From camembert and livarot cheese to boar’s head and stuffed tongue each section of the halls and the surrounding area’s charcuteries is vividly and thoroughly chronicled. A palette of colors and a symphony of smells is given birth to each morning under the shelter of the glass and ironwork pavilions as beneath the streets animals are bludgeoned, knifed, plucked, and bled for human consumption. Shopkeepers’ appearances begin to meld with their wares; the hue of a slice of skin matches that of a ham, and a butter-churner’s hands become soft and supple as pats of butter.

Within this glutted, self-absorbed society lulled into complacency by comfortable excess there is no space for dissenters. Thinness is a sign of moral deficiency and threatens the corpulence of the middle-class. Lust for money and food displaces erotic desire as capitalism exerts itself as the primary moving force. It is within this milieu that starved, toneless Florent struggles to eke out a living without compromising his revolutionary values.

Four & half stars
Zola's descriptions of the food markets at Les Halles are colourful, very detailed and lengthy! He leaves no basket or barrow unturned. Every smell is documented including the decaying, the over-ripe and the composted.

The political and social injustices of the times are also symbolised in the Les Halles markets and reinforced by the various natures of the people who live and work there.

Many of Zola's standard themes are explored here - moral ambiguity, excess, waste, realism, gluttony, materialism, decadence, the haves and the have-nots. Consumerism, in particular, is placed under the Zola microscope in The Belly of Paris, as is the whole idea of spying, voyeurism, surveillance and gossip. Everyone watches everyone else and everyone discusses it with anyone who will listen.

One of the curiosities, for me, in this story and the previous Zola, La Curée is the whole push & pull against the renovation of Paris by Haussmann. On the one hand there is a real sense of loss and nostalgia for 'Old Paris', yet there's also an appreciation of the improved sanitation and open spaces that the clean up achieved. Zola writes about the tension between the corruption and the dynamism inherent in this process in all of his books.
Full review here - http://bronasbooks.blogspot.com/2019/...

Muy interesante, he de decir que por lo poco que había leído (o intentado) de Germinal hace unos años, empecé el libro un poco nervioso por si se me hacía muy pesado y lento.

Al principio fue un poco el caso, aunque creo entender que Zola siempre gusta de empezar sus libros con descripciones muy detalladas del escenario donde sucederá todo, y en menor medida, del protagonista también. Esta parte se me hizo un poco densa, aunque entiendo que es necesario, y la verdad es que después del primer capítulo el libro cambia de ritmo y se vuelve muy entretenido.

Me han gustado especialmente las descripciones de comida, en particular de la tienda de quesos (y por lo que conlleva la escena), los inicios de Florent como inspector del pabellón de la marée (marea?), y el final (jeje).