Teresa Raquin

Thérèse Raquin by Émile Zola
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I read this book to get some touch of Emile Zola writing, not expecting too much from the story itself.
From this perspective it met my expectations - Zola can write - what a discovery.
But the story... it looked to me as if author would like to prove something, to demonstrate something, not to tell the story.
But what?
Possible answer is - naturalism, showing the dirty, cruel, sick side of life and surrounding. There is a lot of this in the book.
My main complaint is that two main characters - Laurent and Therese - were for me absolutely not convincing, some paper caricatures.
As there was not too much to write about such dummies, there are pages, and pages, and pages of descriptions of nightmares they both experienced. Sorry, but I could not stand it.

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