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Rating: 
Summary: Exaggeration
Review: As the back cover of the book says, Nana by Emile Zola is the story of a woman of very low birth who uses her beauty to conquer the high society men of Paris on her way to becoming a courtesan of immense power and attraction. Nana takes place during the final days of the Second Empire of Napoleon III and actually ends with the event that would herald the downfall of the empire: the declaration of war against Prussia.Zola is considered the leading member of the naturalist group of writers. Naturalists are concerned with real worldliness. They wish to portray a sense of what life is really like for their characters. They tend more to concentrate on the type of character that they are writing about instead of the character's uniqueness. As such, Nana becomes a story more about courtesans from lowly births than it is about Nana. Naturalist writing also tends to lend itself to subjects of societal ills and debauchery. Naturalists seek to show the world in all its filth and depravity. To do this they must go where one finds this stuff: in the gutters. Unfortunately, in his attempt to portray the character types one finds in the company of someone like Nana, Zola has created more caricatures than characters. Few of the characters in Nana where credible participants. Nana herself is unlike anyone you would find in sane society and seems more like an amalgam of various real world influences than a person of one mind. The male characters of Nana were particularly egregious examples of overzealousness by Zola. The Comte Muffat is Nana's primary benefactor throughout the story. He withstands great hardships and torments from Nana with nary a protest. This may have been believeable if only Muffat had been the victim of Nana's capriciousness; but, she strings along many more men in this manner, robbing them of their dignity and fortunes without so much as a whimper from them. Nana is compared to a golden fly who rises from the dung heap to taint the high society Parisian world that she invades with her low birth debauchery and sin. Nana may be a metaphor for the overall breakdown of French society which preceded the collapse of the Second Empire; but, Zola would have done better to lay it on less thick. Nana could have been an excellent statement on the necessity of retaining a moral backbone to maintain the fabric of society. Instead, it reads like a cheap nineteenth century soap opera played out with exaggerated, unreal characters.
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Summary: A Lesser Known Masterpiece But Must Be Acknowledged
Review: Emile Zola is credited to have written the first "modern" French novels, that is to say, novels about contemporary subject matter and society, written in a natural style, which is why he is called a Naturalist writer. He was a very observant man, with an eye for detail and realistic dialogue and scenarios. He was a friend of the Impressionist artist Edgar Degas, who himself was considered to be a modern artist for his photographic style of paintings. Emile Zola's greatest novel has got to be Nana. Far from the sugary and innocent Gigi story by Gabrielle Colette which would come later, Nana takes place as the French Second Empire comes to a close. From 1852 to 1870, France became a capitalistic Gilded Age, a time in which men and women would stop at nothing to make it into high society. The decadence of the period is captured, as well as the poverty and decaying morals. It would not be long before Emperor Louis Napoleon III lost the Franco Prussian War (1870-1871) and the empire collapsed. Nana is the daughter of a poor laundress- a washer woman from the country. She becomes a courtesan, a high class prostitute with many wealthy and powerful clients. These include financiers and even a count. Nana has an influence over all the men she becomes involved with, and they are smitten by her, offering her homes and material benefits from her ... favors. In the end, Nana becomes a symbol for the ... society of Emile Zola's time. This novel is a good read for fans of Zola's Naturalistic style and should be read prior to his "The Debacle" which deals with the Franco Prussian War. Nana became the subject for a Manet painting. The book and the painting shocked the stuffy Salon society of Paris, especially because Nana is so blatant in her ...feminine powers over men. But the novel is excellent, a masterpiece of French literature, a critique on the ridiculous level of poverty at the time. Mothers were willing to sell their daughters into prostitution. Nana, however much a hold she has over the men, cannot get the one thing she truly wants- a place in decent French society. She was always seen as a courtesan with no real ladylike qualities. They were wrong. Nana is a great character, and Emile Zola takes us to that time with such precison and power that we are as if in a time machine transported to those French streets and to those brothel bedrooms. He writes without any hold bars. His novels should be made into films. I suggest this reading material for any fan of French writers. If you like Honore De Balzac, Gustav Flaubert and the time period of the Second French Empire, this is your book.
Rating:
Summary: Adultery, lesbianism, and a bunch of lustful fools
Review: How does this woman keep all her lovers' names straight? She manipulates men, and a few women, with sex (or the threat of sexual denial) to take all she can get from Paris high society, ruining everyone who succombs to her "sensuous curves and marble like skin" She gains plenty of material goods from her numerous lovers, even a beautiful apartment in Paris and a manor in the provinces. But she is never able to gain the two things she desires most from Parisian high society: their respect and an equal place among them. No matter how hard she tries to rise above her humble birth as a laundress' daughter (l'assommoir) she is never looked upon as anything more than a courtesan
Rating:
Summary: Nana.
Review: I found the book well written and enjoyable. So much so I have purchased and will read the other books from the cycle (Series). It's evident why numerous books written by Zola have remained classics for so many years.
Rating:
Summary: Rotten Gloss of the Empire
Review: In "Nana", Nana's lovers were: 1. A respectable count
2. His elderly father-in-law
3. A Jewish banker from Frankfurt
4. An actor from "la Variete" theater
5. A count (different from the afore-mentioned) who earns/squanders his fortune on horse races
6. Two brothers (one serves in the army, the other is just a teenage libertine)
7. A provincial cousin of the undermentioned "Figaro" columnist
8. A member of the British royalty
9. Another courtesan It is described how most of them end up in the last paragraph of chapter XIII. Other important participants of this love polygon were: 11. A cynical "Figaro" journal columnist
12. A pimp who employs his own wife as a prostitute
13. Numerous women who earn their living the same way Nana does The novel is very loosely tied with the Rougon-Macquart family tree. We only know (from chapter II) that both of Nana's parents are already dead and all throughout the novel Nana does not get in any contact with her three half-brothers. Only in chapter X, when Nana entertains her guests, she talks a little about her background. However, to find out where Nana came from, one must read "L'Assommoir/the Drum Shop". Some think that the novel is exaggerated almost to the point of grotesque. But the truth is that it is not; it gives an honest portrayal of the French society late under Napoleon III. "Nana" (especially chapter XIV) serves as a great prelude to the novel "la Debacle/the Downfall", though the two are completely different from one another in theme and the former was published in 1880 and is #9 in the R.-M. cycle, whereas the latter was published in 1892 and is #19 in the R.-M. cycle.
Rating: 
Summary: gender-reversal during the decline of the Second Empire
Review: In this novel, one of Zola's five or six "great books" about life during the Second Empire of France, we see a great number of men fall under the destructive influence of Nana, a demimonde who rose to fame from the backstreets of Paris. Nana is a prostitute, performer, socialite and celebrity all in one, making for a massive force of destruction. While every bit as earthy (and then some) as "L'Assommoir," this story is not quite as grim; depending on your sense of humor, it is also funnier.
For 1880, the descriptions of Nana's numerous trysts, games and affairs are, um, rather progressive, but this is a result of Zola's "naturalist" style. He collected copious notes on real figures at the time, and stood by the accuracy of his details. Nana did actually exist as a demimonde (or maybe a few), hastening the decadence of Napoleon III's France.
The back cover misleadingly advertises this story is a "poem of male desires," when it is Nana's desires and ambitions which drive the plot and dominate the imagery. Like no other book that I've read, "Nana" reverses the gender roles of its characters; with a fair amount of cross-dressing, homosexuality, physical abuse and assorted perversions. There are some dramatic scenes of degradation of Nana's men which are either 1.) some measure of revenge on men (Nana's mother experienced a lot of abuse in "L'Assommoir"), 2.) revenge on the wealthy, or 3.) expressions of boredom. Fans of "Fear Factor" might appreciate.
Zola's themes have a lot of parallels today: decadence, fear of aging, and destructive affairs (look at what a divorce proceeding did to General Electric's share price). I had no problem with the translation by Mr. Holden, and the story is certainly not boring. "Nana" is probably not for anyone, certainly not for younger readers, but it deserves its reputation as a great book.
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Summary: Girl Power in the 1860s
Review: No drugs, no rock 'n' roll but plenty of sex. Great entertainment in itself, this book is best read as a sequel to "L'Assommoir" whose tragic downtrodden heroine can be said, in a way, to have got her revenge on society through her daughter, Nana. You might say it's a case of the underclass striking back and one wonders how today's acting and modelling scene compares with Second Empire Paris. Someone once said that every woman is sitting on a gold mine and Nana certainly proves it. Trouble is, she also proves the old saying "easy come, easy go". What would have happened if she'd been inoculated against smallpox?
Rating: 
Summary: It's frightening how dreadfull to read a book can be!
Review: This is by far the WORST AND POOREST book I've ever read. Any normal human being (or animal)who has read this book will either become mad and kill himself or throw it from the highest floor of the nearest building after having rippen it to pieces (I also burned it). I have read a lot of books in my life (I read 4 books/week since I'm 9) and this is the only one I've destroied!! It's horrible and I'm now sure that Zola was completely out of his mind!!!
Nana is a completely stupid and horrible 18-year old girl who can't do anything else than prostitute herself and destroy others lives and who (God thank you) dies like all her family in the other books. The book is SO BORING!!!!!! You really want to die to stop reading it!!! And it's long..
There doesn't happen anything during the whole book, which is almost 700 pages long!! I read it in French, I hope it's better in English for the poor souls who will have to read it.
Zola is well-known because he writes "well", meaning he uses methaphores and other special constructions, but can you imagine 700 pages full of words you don't understand and complicated structures??!! It's like hell.
The book is a critizism of the Second Empire, politics, and how society works. It's a naturalist novel and heredity is the most important fact. Now we know that all the theory of heredity is false, so this novel is completely out-of-date. I hope you will never have to analyse Nana, because it's almost impossible, I tried!!!! (for school of course).
IF YOU WANT TO LIVE LONG AND HAPPY, DON'T BUY OR READ THIS BOOK!!!!!!!
Rating:
Summary: indictment of decadence
Review: This novel employs a courtesan, Nana, to condamn the decadence of late 2nd Empire France (1852-1870). Arising from a family ravaged by alcoholism and abuse, the great beauty Nana becomes a celebrity in theatre and then as the mistress of the high aristocracy and bourgeous. At her core, she is a devourer, empty of anything but the will to suck whatever she can out of anyone who comes near. She ruins the fortunes of numerous men with frivolous demands for things she barely wants, and Zola in the process illuminates how they made their careers and were ruined by their appeites for this woman, who becomes an archetypal destuctive force. It is indeed a bleak and severe indictment of an entire society: you learn how celebrity worked in it, from the bottom up and back down again. Her sexuality is omnivorous, the men her willing victims for a mention in the Figaro gossip columns. (As Zola put, "les hommes suivent une chienne qui n'est pas en chaleur.") Zola makes for fascinating reading, as does Balzac, for the wider tableau he paints. The writers are similar, except that Zola was a far more careful writer. Unfortunately, it is often difficult to find any characters you can like or admire, which makes the cynicism and condamnations overbearing and hard to get through at times. There are numerous inventions in it that became classic, like "blond venus" and "golden fly". This adds to it as a glorious classic novel. In a wider sense, this is one of the central novels in Zola's cycle on the "natural history" of an extended family, the Rougon-Macquart. It is based on a crude kind of Darwinist sociology, a kind of reasoning that was in its infancy when he wrote and which later culminated in Freud and Durkheim. THat is another level that is quite fascinating, a philosophical cycle of novels mixing biological science and Schopenauer, all deeply pessimistic and determinist. Recommended, but it takes perserverence and a strong stomach to finish it.
Rating:
Summary: The Price of riding Nana
Review: Zola presents us with the omnipotence of debauchery. Nana is empowered by the elusiveness of the respect that she craves. This sends her on a mission to revel in her debauchery and destroy the value placed upon material objects. She harnassess her sexuality to reduce people to mere possessions to be used and discarded at her leisure. It's her game, the stakes are high and she makes the rules.
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