Rating: 
Summary: Not light reading
Review: Unfortunately, Zola's Germinal initially came across as contrived to me. Clearly, he spent a lot of time in the mines and with the miners, but his recall of details--at least initially--felt like a third person accounting/reportage. This is in contrast to the authenticism of someone like D.H. Lawrence, who knew intimately the life of a miner, and whose depiction of that life seems more effortless. The novel ultimately becomes satisfying, however, as we get to know Etienne and his comrades, and hope for their success in their revolt against the shareholders of the mines.
Rating: 
Summary: Human Life as an Experiment
Review: When Emile Zola wrote about exprimental novel, he wasn't just talking about experimenting on style and literature. He was also talking about the novel as being a social laboratory for the human kind. So he wrote Germinal, and we are thankful that he did. Since it was written, Germinal attracted many criticism, more negative than positive due to the way he is experimenting on the hunman condition in the mines of Montsou.This is a very powerful novel about how the misery in the lives of the French miners led them to test and taste revolution in the disguise of a strike and how the clash between classed led inevitable violence. This is a must read story of human life in the mines, with all its misery and evil... But remember there is always hope, because it is "germinal."
| 
