Hello everybody ,
Today I choose to talk about my favorite novel ! It is entitled Thérèse Raquin, it was written by one of the most famous writer of the 19th century, Emile Zola. This novel was published in 1867. Normally, I do not like love story but this novel make a deep impession on me…
The story starts with three characters : the main character : Thérèse ; Camille and Camille’s mother. Thérèse was raised by Camille’s mother, Camille is sick since he is a little boy, adult, Camille and Thérèse get married. They live in Paris, in their shop where Thérèse sells jewelrys and clothes with Camille’s mother. One day Camille returned to the house with an old friends of him, Vincent. He is a painter and at the first look Thérèse fell in love with him… Zola uses the description and insist on the love at first sight…
So, Thérèse and Vincent start an hidden love relation, they have sexual intercourse in the marital bed. But Thérèse and Vincent want to live thier relation freely so they decided to kill Camille. On one summer night they go eat in a restaurant and they decided to take a walk on a lake in a small boat and Vincent drown Camille.. Nobody saw them.. This extract is very intensive we attend at the drowning !
But after the murder the lovers do not feel free, on the contrary, they become to be crazy and the murder haunt them.. so they kill themselves because they do not manage to be happy.
I recommand you so much this novel !
I’ve read this book and I liked it although there are not many twists ; but the writing of Zola is superb and his characters’ feelings are very well described.
I’ve read this novel a few years ago. My french teacher was a huge fan of Zola so we studied many of his novels. Anyway, I also liked it even if I don’t totally agree with you when you talked about a « deep impression » ahah. Your article made me want to read it again 🙂
I also liked reading this novel a lot, so much that I began watching all of the film adaptations that I could find…Some were quite good as well (even if they couldn’t be beyond the novel obviously 😉 ) but I had to stop after watching the one I shouldn’t have watched: a korean horror movie based on Zola’s novel, implying a priest and vampires….
I have read this book two years ago… and it really marked me ! I loved Emile Zola’s way of writing! We are deep in the action, and according to me, it was horrible to see Camille’s mother understand what is going on without being able to say it! I also have seen the movie adaptation with Tom Felton, Jessica Lange and an another film adaptation (a korean movie) called Thirst with my friends… it was most strange but original !