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    The Bright Side of Life
    The Bright Side of Life
    The Bright Side of Life
    Audiobook17 hours

    The Bright Side of Life

    Written by Émile Zola

    Narrated by Elizabeth Jasicki

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Orphaned with a substantial inheritance at the age of ten, Pauline Quenu is taken from Paris to live with her relatives, Monsieur and Madame Chanteau and their son Lazare, in the village of Bonneville on the wild Normandy coast. Her presence enlivens the household and Pauline is the only one who can ease Chanteau's gout-ridden agony. Her love of life contrasts with the insularity and pessimism that infects the family, especially Lazare, for whom she develops a devoted passion. Gradually, Madame Chanteau starts to take advantage of Pauline's generous nature, and jealousy and resentment threaten to blight all their lives. The arrival of a pretty family friend, Louise, brings tensions to a head.

    The twelfth novel in the Rougon Macquart series, The Bright Side of Life is remarkable for its depiction of intense emotions and physical and mental suffering. The precarious location of Bonneville and the changing moods of the sea mirror the turbulent relations of the characters, and as the story unfolds its title comes to seem ever more ironic.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    TranslatorAndrew Rothwell
    Release dateNov 20, 2018
    ISBN9781977330697
    The Bright Side of Life
    Author

    Émile Zola

    <p><b>Émile Zola</b> nació en París en 1840. Hijo de un ingeniero italiano que murió cuando él apenas tenía siete años, nunca fue muy brillante en los estudios, trabajó durante un tiempo en la administración de aduanas, y a los veintidós años se hizo cargo del departamento de publicidad del editor Hachette. Gracias a este empleo conoció a la sociedad literaria del momento y empezó a escribir. <em>Thérèse Raquin</em> (1867; ALBA CLÁSICA núm. LVIII) fue su primera novela «naturalista», que él gustaba de definir como «un trozo de vida».</p> <p>En 1871, <em>La fortuna de los Rougon</em> y <em>La jauría</em> (editadas conjuntamente en ALBA CLÁSICA MAIOR núm. XXXIV) iniciaron el ciclo de <em>Los Rougon-Macquart</em>, una serie de veinte novelas cuyo propósito era trazar la historia natural y social de una familia bajo el Segundo Imperio; a él pertenecen, entre otras, <em>El vientre de París</em> (1873), <em>La conquista de Plassans</em> (1874) (editadas conjuntamente en AALBA CLÁSICA MAIOR núm. XXXV), <em>La caída del padre Mouret</em> (1875), <em>La taberna</em> (1877), <em>Nana</em> (1880) y <em>El Paraíso de las Damas</em> (1883: ALBA MINUS núm. 29); la última fue <em>El doctor Pascal</em> (1893). Zola seguiría posteriormente con el sistema de ciclos con las novelas que componen <em>Las tres ciudades</em> (1894-1897) y <em>Los cuatro Evangelios</em> (1899-1902). En 1897 su célebre intervención en el caso Dreyfuss le valió un proceso y el exilio.</p> <p>«Digo lo que veo –escribió una vez-, narro sencillamente y dejo al moralista el cuidado de sacar lecciones de ello. Puse al desnudo las llagas de los de abajo. Mi obra no es una obra de partido ni de propaganda; es una obra de verdad.» Murió en Paris en 1902.</p>

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    Reviews for The Bright Side of Life

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      Immensely beautiful story narration Pauline the protagonist is the divine soul which teaches us so much yet to be understood by people today loved the voice
    • 4/5
      Zola's story is about a middle class Normandy family that is set in the last part of the 19th century. Here is a quote from the preface:

      "Lazare, on the other hand, is one of those wretched beings whose number seem to be constantly increasing in our midst, the product of our corrupt civilization, our grotesque educational systems, our restlessness and thirst for wealth, our thousand vices and our blatant hypocrisy."

      Written by the translator, Ernest Alfred Vizetelly, I thought this was a modern commentary, written in a modern printing. Noooo, he lived at the end of the 19th century, as Zola did.

      I cried when the family dog, Mathew, grown old and suffering from cancer of the kidneys, died.

      "'oh! My poor old dog!' cried Lazare, bursting into sobs. Matthew was dead. A little bloody foam Frothed round his Jaws. As Lazare laid him down on the floor he looked as though he were asleep. Then once more the young man felt that all was over. His dog was dead now, and this filled him with unreasonable grief and seemed to cast a gloom over his whole life."

      If you have read"The Belly of Paris," you know that Pauline was the darling daughter of the Quenus, who had a"meat" shop by the Public Market in Paris. Her parents have died, and she is sent to live with her father's brother in a coastal village in Normandy. She has a nice little inheritance that no doubt makes her welcome in this family. But little by little, the aunt digs into Pauline's inheritance.

      If you have ever known someone who lives to be a martyr, you will recognize them in Pauline, and you will feel like strangling Pauline as you read this tale.

      Awesome characterization.
    • 4/5
      So, after the sex-and-shopping of Au bonheur des dames, Zola comes up with an indisputable beach novel. No-one can say he wasn't ready for the airport-bookstall era...The basic scenario of this novel is very simple: little Pauline comes to live with her aunt and uncle in a remote village on the Normandy coast after the death of her parents. One horror after another strikes the family, in the gratuitous kind of way only Hardy and Zola can get away with, and Pauline herself has to cope with some pretty nasty stuff in her life, but (without resort to religion) she somehow manages to retain almost Ann-of-Green-Gables levels of optimism whilst all around her are dying in excruciating pain, losing their homes to floods, failing in business, etc. And by some miracle, Zola manages to make her a likeable and sympathetic central character despite this. Having discovered the value of obstetrics as a way of building a climactic scene in Pot-bouille, Zola goes one better here, with what Yves Berger claims in the preface of my edition must be the longest and most gruesomely-detailed childbirth scene in French literature. If it isn't, by any chance, I'm pretty sure I don't want to read the book that outdoes it. But again, it's not gratuitous, it's there to remind us of the absolute horror that the most normal event in life can turn into, the pain women are expected to go through, and the rather inadequate resources of the medical profession of the time for dealing with it ("...I can save either your wife or your baby..."). He also scores what must surely be another first here by bringing in menstruation as a major symbolic element. Being Zola, it is not delicately and indirectly alluded to: we get all the gory details we would like. And of course there is a social point to make here as well as a symbolic one: Zola shows us the imbecility of Mme Chanteau's reluctance to explain to her ward what's happening to her body when she bleeds for the first time. Fortunately, Pauline happens to be in a position to deal with the question by reading it up in her cousin's medical books, and copes in a very enlightened modern way. She continues to alarm other characters throughout the book with how clued-up she is about sex and unembarrassed talking about it: obviously Zola wants us to see how much better life would be for young women if they all acted like that. Other than the ob/gyn element of the book, we get some hardline rural poverty (including domestic abuse, alcohol abuse, and all the rest), seaweed chemistry, coastal defence (four years before Der Schimmelreiter), veterinary problems of dogs and cats, and the usual financial/inheritance/dowry shenanigans. And quite a bit of Schopenhauer — obviously Zola felt things were at risk of becoming too cheerful if he didn't deploy some heavy weapons...A relatively minor work in the sequence, but still with some interesting ideas and subject-matter.
    • 4/5
      The Joy of Life by Emile ZolaThis is one of the less well-known of the Rougon-Macquart novels. While not among the top tier of the series, it is one that deserves to be more widely read.The Rougon-Macquart connection is Pauline Quenu, the protagonist. She is the daughter of the owners of the butcher shop featured in The Belly of Paris. As the novel opens she is 9 years old and has been orphaned. She, along with her ample inheritance, is sent to live with distant relatives, an older couple, the Chanteaus, and their 19 year old son, Lazare. The Chanteaus are retired "gentry", and live in reduced circumstances in a fishing village on the North Coast of France. Pauline forms an immediate bond with Lazare, and idolizes him. He is a dilettante, and is unable to decide what to do with his life. When Pauline first meets him, he is composing a "masterpiece" symphony. When he gets bored with this, he goes to Paris to study medicine. When he fails his exams, he studies science. He does not complete these studies, but returns home confident that he can start a successful business involving seaweed extractions. Lazare's various enterprises are expensive, and one after the other they fail. The Chanteaus begin using Pauline's inheritance to finance Lazare's continuing unsuccessful enterprises. Soon, they are also relying on Pauline's money to fund their everyday living expenses (above and beyond the expenses of her keep they have been legitimately paid). When Pauline comes of age, and they face an audit, they arrive at a convenient way to settle matters: Pauline and Lazare will become engaged. Pauline is amenable, since she has always adored Lazare, and he in his own way also loves her. As her fiancé, neither he nor his parents will have to repay Pauline, and it will furthermore be all to Pauline's advantage, since Lazare is so brilliant. It will be no surprise that none of Lazare's enterprises are successful, and that the Pauline and Lazare's relationship is not smooth. Pauline is at times a "too good to be true" character, but within the context of a 19th century novel she is believable and steadfast. She remains loyal to Madame Chanteau, even when Madame Chanteau has turned on her, perhaps out of shame from having depleted Pauline's fortune. She serves as an uncomplaining nurse to Monsieur Chanteau, who suffers from crippling gout. And despite all the trials and tribulations, she loves and remains true to Lazare.All the characters in this book are well-drawn. One thing that I have not before noticed in Zola is the prominent role played by the family pets, Matthew the dog and Minouche the cat, whose characters are also well-developed. In fact, the death of Matthew is portrayed in a manner worthy of Dickens, and goes on for pages--certainly it is featured more prominently than the death of Madame Chanteau. The other factor I particularly enjoyed in this novel is the setting on the northern coast. The fishing village itself is being slowing eaten by the encroaching sea. In winter, there are violent storms, yet Pauline and Lazare spend idyllic summer days on the beach. All of this is very atmospheric, and the feel of an ocean shore permeates the novel.