The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 2 March 1998
by Émile Zola
In this book, French author Émile Zola describes the remarkable life of a young woman, who, after a comical debut in a small theater musical, is transformed from a middle-of-the-road call girl to the most desired courtesan in all of Paris. Nana is young, a single mother, and gets by on the price men will pay for her sexual attention. She is inattentive to any but herself, and is not slave to any one man's passion or control; not even when she deigned to live with a brutal and selfish fellow actor. The reality and explicitness of this novel is jarring, having been published in 1880. It must have caused quite a sensation. All of the people in the book are realistic, their passions familiar, and their failings inevitable. Zola brings Paris to life in a dramatically realistic manner. Nana's fate is, perhaps, predictable, especially given its time, but the sympathy the writer evokes, against the greater context of history, is touching. Yet, he never proselytizes, describing everything from the atmosphere of prostitution, to homosexuality, to imperial horse races with frankness and honesty.
Also by Zola: [The Ladies' Paradise]