Therese Raquin by Emile Zola, Fiction, Classics - Paperback

Raised alongside her sickly cousin, Therese lives the quietest of lives. Yet something impetuous and wild stirs within her -- as she learns of herself during moments of escape into the countryside.

But now the family is in Paris, taking over a mercer's shop in the dingy Arcade of the Pont Neuf. To appease the aunt who has cared for her, she marries her pale, nerve-wracked cousin. Then a schoolmate of her husband's appears -- almost his complete opposite, with full voice, jovial laughter -- and a strapping build that givers her nervous pangs to contemplate . . .

And a new Therese, one her aunt or husband has never known, threatens to break free of the restraints that have bound her, all these years!

Back Jacket

'Therese Raquin' is a clinically observed, sinister tale of adultery and murder among the lower orders in nineteenth-century Paris. Zola's dispassionate dissection of the motivations of his characters, mere 'human beasts' who kill in order to satisfy their lust, is much more than an atmospheric Second Empire period-piece. 'Therese Raquin' stands as a key early manifesto of the French Naturalist movement, of which Zola was the founding father. Even today, this novel has lost none of its power to shock.