L'Assommoir [The Drinking Den]

By: Émile Zola

Narrated by: Leighton Pugh

Brutal, gripping, and heart-wrenching, L'Assommoir (also known as The Drinking Den) chronicles the tragic downward spiral of Gervaise Macquart, a good-natured and hardworking laundress who slides into alcoholism and despair.

After her lover abandons her and their two children, Gervaise marries a tin worker, Coupeau, who helps her rebuild her life. She starts her own business, and the two have a daughter, Anna (the protagonist of Zola's later novel Nana). But their happiness is short-lived as a freak accident leaves Coupeau seriously injured, beginning the family's fall into alcohol, desperation, and violence.

Disturbingly realistic, L'Assommoir is a vivid portrayal of life in late 19th-century Paris.

Download the accompanying reference guide.Public Domain (P)2019 Naxos AudioBooks

realistic

sad but true of some lives not just in 19th century Paris great narrator

Zola delves into Dickensian territory

A gripping study of a family’s alcoholism-fueled descent into poverty, domestic violence, and “moral corruption.”

Less saccharine and more venal than Dickens, in this book Zola nevertheless explores similar subjects of poverty and dissolution among the urban working class, with 1850-60s Paris as his setting rather than Dickens’ Victorian London.

visual tactile writing

descriptive writing. ARC of a life. drinking as an acid that dissolves will . character fortunes life