Nana

It's a pity people who are just trolling for a page turner sometimes rent books they can't handle. Perhaps the bad reviewers of this book should stick to bestsellers. This is a magnificent book and extremely well read. It may not be to everyone's taste but it is fascinating and intricate. Besides giving you a slice of Second Empire Paris and its night life, it has characters you care about, and makes you want to know what happens next, which are my two measures of a good story.

This title is a poor choice as an audio book. Zola's tedious and precise language is not very suitable to be heard, and the reader's monotone voice makes this a dull, unenjoyable title.

What a disappointment. The narrator is reading the book, and not acting. there is no change in his inflections or accents as he changes characters and I nearly fell asleep several times. Yawn. I gave up after chapter 5 so this is not a reflection on the book, only upon this presentation.

I wish that I had read the two extant reviews before I purchased this. I fully agree with their assessments. Or, just as wise--I wish that I had sampled the audio before. He really does read much too slowly and monotonously. Because of this disappointing audiobook I now always try a sample before buying. I really love Zola and was so looking forward to this. I gave it two tries of less than an hour before ditching. But i do recommend Germinal in audiobook.

Here?s an audio book that just goes on forever in trite dialog about a wide range of characters doing everyday things for hours on end! I gave up after the first couple of hours and now only listen to bits and pieces when I finish another audio book. I?m 5 hours into this and nothing?s changed ? same trite, uninteresting dialog with absolutely no plot or story development. I think I?ll just erase it at this point and start listening to NPR.

I didn't enjoy this book on so many levels. The characters are the most unsympathetic lot you could ever have the bad fortune to spend 18 hours with. I couldn't decide if their conduct reminded me more of the impulse control of preschoolers, the backbiting and cattiness of middle school, or the predatory social interactions of a frat party--maybe all of the above, with sex for sale added in. The novel doesn't have the semblance of a plot until about a third of the way in, which makes the first third very slow going, especially since it introduces a plethora of characters that is takes a long time to sort out. Zimmerman reads the voices expressively enough, but the rest of his narration is so woodenly articulated that he might as well be reading a physics text. The translation feels awkward; more than once I wondered if the wrong word had been chosen. Maybe I would have liked this book more if I knew more about Second Empire France, whom Nana supposedly represents--possibly it's brilliant in that regard, but any political allegory was wasted on me. However, Zola does vividly depict the demimonde of the theatre with its courtesan-artists; if you ever wondered why women in Victorian novels protect their virtue so assiduously, it was to keep from spending the rest of their lives in this kind of bad company.