The stars must have been in alignment for me when it was time to spin the Classics Club wheel because I’ve ended up with a favourite author.
I’ve been slowly making my way through the Rougon-Marquet novels by Émile Zola. There are 20 books in all which give a comprehensive portrait of French society and history through the lives of the members of two branches of a family (the very successful Rougons and the lower class Marquets). The first title — The Fortunes of the Rougons — came out in 1871 with the final book — Doctor Pascal published in 1893. In an introduction to the final book, Zola recommended the order in which he felt it was best to read these books, an order that didn’t match exactly to their order of publication.
Initially I just read whichever book took my fancy but then decided it would make more sense to start at the beginning and follow Zola’s recommendation.
The Classics Club spin has now delivered me Money (L’Argent) which is number four in the recommended reading order but was actually the 18th to be published. As the title indicates, Zola’s focus is on the financial world of the Second French Empire which ruled between 1852 and 1870. A cursory read of the introduction to my edition, tells me that Zola’s intention was to illustrate the harmful effect caused by speculation and greed and how existing financial laws were not robust enough to prevent fraud and negligence among company directors.
The story is told through the example of Aristide Saccard, a character who featured in two previous titles. He’s fallen from grace having been bankrupted when his unscrupulous money-making schemes all went wrong. His brother who is an important political figure wants nothing more to do with him and he’s also ostracised by other financiers who frequent the Bourse (the French Stock Exchange). Saccard plans to fight back and comes up with yet another scheme to make him a rich man.
I’m looking forward to reading this one. It will be a slow read for sure — 370 pages of quite small and dense type with a narrative full of the detail Zola loves and many, many characters.
But I couldn’t be happier to be back in Zola land once more.
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