Customer Reviews:
 The best Zola novel March 29, 2004
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
This book was written nearly 150 years ago yet feels utterly contemporary. In this book, Zola turns his attention to those members of his fictional disfuntional family who work in or around the railway. Unlike some of his other books, Zola sets aside his fixation with the social injustices of the day to create a thriller about a murder on a train and the culprits' disintegrating lives as they attempt to conceal their crime. It may be far-fetched, but the story moves at a cracking pace. The atmosphere is enhanced by the evocative descriptions of the engine drivers battling to control their steam trains. "Germinal" may be Zola's masterpiece, but nothing else he wrote matches this gripping effort for excitement.A great read.
 Murder and lust on 19th century railways November 21, 2003
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
A gripping story of murder and lust, of the dark side of human nature -- of the beast within. The most brilliant aspects of the novel are Zola's descriptions of trains and railways on the Paris-Le Havre line, around which all action from murder to love to jealousy to a magnificently described train wreck commences. The protagonist is a young engine driver Jacques Lantier in the 1870s, son of Gervaise (depicted in _L'Assommoir_) and half-brother of Nana. Jacques is never mentioned in the earlier novels as Zola only invented him later for a clear purpose in _La Bete Humaine_. Jacques unfortunately is the most flagrant blemish of this novel. He is an obvious literary invention, an over-simplification, and perhaps some of the other characters too are simplified to a slightly lesser extent, but Jacques' tormented character is clearly psychologically unsustainable and more of a theoretical strawman than a fully developed individual. In contrast with _Germinal_, _Nana_, and _L'Assommoir_, this sacrifice of reality for tendency is also why _La Bete Humaine_ ends up lacking in the realistic depth of the mentioned novels. Some plot twists only add to the sense of lessened realism, especially when everything takes place in about a year's time, and it all takes away some of the sting of Zola's criticism of the powers that be. Nonetheless, _La Bete Humaine_, in its depiction of primeval murderous traits hiding underneath the educated sheen of modern 19th century society, buried deep in the thunderous rumble of railways, resonates in the recesses of human mind with its sinister tragedy. Oxford World's Classics series version is the latest English translation of the novel. Zola's colloquialisms are rendered here well in a suitably colloquial English tone, although there are a couple of "blimeys", which are English enough to appear bizarre in a French novel, translation or not. 3 stars for the meat of the book: trains and railways.
god good devil evil May 30, 2001
9 out of 15 found this review helpful
man loves girl. girl abused as child. man finds out. man kills abuser. someone sees him. man tries to get him to like her. they fall in love. him homicidal.he jealous. complications thread through zola's doomed tale of characters. no-one is spared. the reader is confused. who do we sympathise with? there is no-one. everyone is doomed to their own desires.we watch, we read, we judge, and,god help us, we don't learn. Like trying to teach old dogs new tricks - we become old dogs.in an age of summer holiday novels, this is the bitter chill of autumn. The first leaf torn from the tree, to the last, containing all the ferocious chaos inbetween.
 one-track mind? May 30, 2001
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
I stumbled upon this book for 15p in a charity shop and now it holds pride of place in my second-hand book collection. Which is a pity, because a book so driven by mad lust, unfathomable plans, crazed desires, selfishness,metal and flesh, blood and rust, belongs somewhere else. It belongs to then, and now, effortlessly transgressing boundaries of time, sucking the reader into its twisted murderous love affair wherein the reader is reduced to the state of impotent voyeur, unable to judge- much like the impulsive protagonists.Its' themes of modernity versus the base instincts in man are ruthlessly explored ,each character is seeped in, and bound to, their own selfish ends; their own misguided understandings of possession, set against a backdrop of an industrial revoulution which reflects the disasterous shortcomings of the protagonists and their boiling provincial inadequacies. don't, don't read it on the train...
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