Therese Raquin by Emile Zola, translated by Robin Buss (Penguin Classics, 2005)
Therese Raquin is a thoroughly unpleasant story. Two lovers, Therese and Laurent, murder her invalid husband so that they might marry one another, but end up killing themselves, overcome with guilt and hatred. Zola seems to think he’s presenting these characters and their situation in a new, unbiased, scientific way. There are constant references to their temperaments rather than their characters, which only seems to generalize rather than to individualize them. Zola is neither empathetic nor insightful, and all the characters remain flat, unnuanced, and undeveloped. Add to this a lot of static repetition of detail and narrative action, and the book seems almost deliberately written to repel the reader. It’s perversely fascinating for that reason, and readable, but neither enjoyable nor enlightening.
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