La Bete Humaine

Rating:
Summary: Murder and lust on 19th century railways
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Worth the while.
Review: Initially, I gave La Bete Humaine five stars, but after some thought downgraded it to four. It's quite good, and in parts downright spectacular, but in all honesty it doesn't rank on the same level as the monolithic L'Assommoir, Germinal and Nana. The problem lies with the premise. In the three aforementioned novels, the characters were all basically ordinary people. This made it easy to be pulled into their emotional struggles, and made for unspeakably captivating reading because it was so easy to see how _real_ and _human_ they were. I stood behind L'Assommoir's Gervaise all the way, _literally loudly yelling_ as I accompanied her to L'Assommoir's inevitable conclusion.

I did not have the same reaction in La Bete Humaine. The protagonist is an "ordinary person," except he's afflicted with a mental disorder that makes him want to kill women. And thus, all his character development works to develop that one unfortunate aspect of his personality. I could not get inside his head. I could not see reality in his emotional struggle. To be frank, his moral dilemmas seemed very much invented by Zola, as opposed to taken from life. Admittedly, they were very elaborate inventions and _still_ made for captivating reading - that's why I'm still giving it four stars. Gervaise is a real character. Jacques Lantier is a writer's invention.

I would, however, deem it necessary for you to read La Bete Humaine, if only for one scene - the train wreck. That is one of Zola's most powerful scenes ever. It is really quite amazing. As I read, I saw and heard it happen, and I rallied behind the people that courageously stood up to the catastrophe just like I rallied behind Gervaise in L'Assommoir. It needs to be read to be believed. But the rest, I'm not too thrilled with in the end, and I didn't walk away carrying an image of any character from the book in my brain for days like I did after reading L'Assommoir, Germinal and Nana. So four stars it is. La Bete Humaine is a worthy member of the Rougon-Macquart series, and deserving of your time, but falls just short of greatness.

Rating:
Summary: The runaway train on a one-way trip to nowhere
Review: One of Zola's best and most famous works. There is something strangely fascinating about a murder where the killer escapes detection and punishment only to receive terminal treatment from another, totally unexpected source. When this happens twice in the same book, along with some tales of child abuse, a high-level cover-up, a sabotage attempt on a train in which virtually everyone is killed in the carnage except the persons targeted, a suicide, plus some assorted couplings outside of the marshalling yards, things get really interesting. What makes people commit such crimes? Here Zola really shows his skill in explaining his characters' motives and the dark, primeval forces that drive them. A pulsating, chilling story from beginning to end, full of unexpected twists, starting with the creation of a previously unknown member of the Macquart family as the novel's main character. Highly recommended for long train or air journeys.

Rating:
Summary: Sex Adultery and several murders
Review: Plenty of adultery and murders in this book, but not gory. It is an entertaining story and after it's all said and done, isn't that what we are doing this for? It is not one of my favorite of zola's rougon-macquart series but it is still good. This is the story of homicidal woman hater Jaques Latiner, son of Gervaise (L'assomoir) and brother to Nana Coupeau (nana) Claude Latiner (the masterpiece) and a coal miner dude in one of his books I have yet to read (germinal)

Rating:
Summary: An unbearable lightness of plot !
Review: There are many great French authors. Albert Camus, Alexander Dumas to name a few ... and perhaps even Emile Zola, though you could not tell from reading La Bete Humaine. This story reads more like a bad Hollywood script. Each of the main characters is either a psychopathic killer or a sexual deviant. These characters then do the most unspeakably horrible acts without any remorse or regret and without every understanding the motivations behind these terrible actions.

I found all the technical talk of trains mildly interesting, but since I am not much of a train enthusiast I did not appreciate it as much as other readers might. I was mostly interested in the introspective search each character had the opportunity to perform, but which was only dealt with in a cursory manner by the author. The deepest character in the book is Jacques, the homicidal maniac, and as one reviewer put it, I can't quite relate to him.

I believe that if this book was turned into a movie script, we would have the perennial plot for this summer's action block buster. The only interesting facet of reading this book was that it was given to me by a woman who was very close to the lead character Severine. She too had been molested at a young age by an older man, she too had multiple affairs and she is the only person I have ever met who I believe is completely capable of unspeakable acts without any remorse. Ultimately I found this woman to be much as the book: morally squalid, emmotionally meaningless and without any substance.

Rating:
Summary: An unbearable lightness of plot !
Review: There are many great French authors. Albert Camus, Alexander Dumas to name a few ... and perhaps even Emile Zola, though you could not tell from reading La Bete Humaine. This story reads more like a bad Hollywood script. Each of the main characters is either a psychopathic killer or a sexual deviant. These characters then do the most unspeakably horrible acts without any remorse or regret and without every understanding the motivations behind these terrible actions.

I found all the technical talk of trains mildly interesting, but since I am not much of a train enthusiast I did not appreciate it as much as other readers might. I was mostly interested in the introspective search each character had the opportunity to perform, but which was only dealt with in a cursory manner by the author. The deepest character in the book is Jacques, the homicidal maniac, and as one reviewer put it, I can't quite relate to him.

I believe that if this book was turned into a movie script, we would have the perennial plot for this summer's action block buster. The only interesting facet of reading this book was that it was given to me by a woman who was very close to the lead character Severine. She too had been molested at a young age by an older man, she too had multiple affairs and she is the only person I have ever met who I believe is completely capable of unspeakable acts without any remorse. Ultimately I found this woman to be much as the book: morally squalid, emmotionally meaningless and without any substance.

Rating:
Summary: A Victim of Beastly Instincts
Review: There is something very profound in "La Bete Humaine/The Beast in Man", in spite of the fact that all of its characters have a very superficial mentality. Its scenes recreate very well the atmosphere of the late days of the Second Empire. Jacques Lantier is the main character, but the novel is not at all centered around him or his urge to kill women; only as late as chapter eight he attempts to commit a violent act and it is as late as chapter eleven that he does commit a violent act. The abundance of adultery, police incompetence, two single murders (chapters one and twelve), a multiple murder (chapter ten) all committed purely out of jealousy and an uxoricide committed out of greed show the living environment and the morale of those days. Definitely, one of the major novels of the Rougon-Macquart series.

Rating:
Summary: Tragic Grandeur
Review: This is one of Zola's most violent and disturbing novels, but it possesses a kind of "tragic grandeur," to quote the translator, which makes it story and its characters live on in the mind long after the reader has turned the last page. Part crime thriller and partly a novel of railway life, it tells the story of a group of people who are slaves to their passions and whose ultimate doom is preordained by their backgrounds and temperaments. There are marvellous passages of descriptive writing and if you think that a novel about the railways is bound to be dull you will find yourself happily mistaken. The depiction of Jacques, genetically doomed to be a murderer, is more frightening than any Hannibal Lecter. Some modern readers may have difficulty empathising with Zola's ideological beliefs, but in the end the novel carries all before it. A shattering, truly memorable work of art, very well translated.

Rating:
Summary: La Bete Humaine = Madame Bovary + Crime and Punishment
Review: Zola at his most pessimistic, this is a book that will reaffirm your belief - if you have such - that destiny, defined by heredity and the interconnectedness of events, is inescapable. Set on the French railways during the latter part of the nineteenth century and best appreciated in the context of the Rougon-Macquart series (twenty novels in which Zola examines genetic and environmental influences on human character), La Bete Humaine (The Human Beast) is aptly titled. In summary, a magnificent work that excels in descriptive power without detail, analogous to the impressionist art movement with which its author identified. Worth reading for the train-wreck scene alone - one of great literature's most breathtaking passages.