In 1789, the French rebelled against their hereditary monarchs and created a Republic. In time, the Republic thickened into Empire, before returning to monarchy. And then, in 1848, the monarchy fell for a second time, to a Second Republic. But in 1851, in what amounted to a coup, Napoleon III restored his family line into a Second Empire.

Got all that? By 1851, the French were divided between republicans, monarchists, monarchists 2.0 (those who didn't believe in the original line of kings and queens, but in their relatives who had taken over the throne years earlier), and lovers of empire. As well as, no doubt, some socialists and the like. For twenty years, the French survived an Empire, before it too finally came crumbling down.

It is across these twenty years that Emile Zola sets his twenty book cycle, of which The Fortune of the Rougons is the first. Through three interconnected families - one proletariat, crushed by the boots of the self-interested; one bourgeois and crippled by madness; and one nouveau riche Emperor-butt-kissing clan - the author explores life under the Second Empire in a dizzying array of forms. Each book has its own tone, cast of characters, genre, and plot, but all are connected through a family web.

Fortune is stuck with a lot of exposition, so you'll probably want to a) have some patience, and b) move on to a second book afterward so as to use all of this knowledge. At the same time, it is littered with hilarious and moving character portraits, ambience, and genuinely beautiful writing. Taking place in the days immediately following the coup, and set in the Provencal town of Plassans, Zola weaves a narrative of, well, fortunes. Those whose fortunes rise and those that fall as some conspiracies buckle, and others blossom. All mixed in to a tawdry family history that goes back to the 1780s, when France was in its final, blistering years of monarchy.

From here, you can venture to any one of the other Rougon-Macquart novels (except the last, Doctor Pascal). The next book published was The Kill which I'd probably recommend next. Zola himself had a preferred reading order that goes on to His Excellency Eugene Rougon - that is, however, one of the drier books in the series, so perhaps only go to that one if you're feeling particularly enchanted by Fortune. ( )

I already enjoyed reading two novels in the Rougons-Macquart series. This first installment of the series describes a family, dealing with an uprising of republicans against the French monarchy. While the young Silvére en Miette show genuine inocence, the rest of the world (with exeption of his uncle Pascal) are driven by greed and feelings of revenge.

Zola's style of writing is excellent and I felt drawn into his world from the first page. The characters are interresting, even though they are sometimes for from sympathetic. This said however, I have to give a warning. This is not an uplifting book. It has scenes of astounding cruelty and a very dark worldview. You will need to call a friend, to cheer you up after this. That said; it is a novel which will make you glad that you have read it. It will give you a personal view into the lives of an extraordinary family, in a small French town. ( )

The first installment in Zola's family epic roman-fleuve, Les Rougon-Macquart, La Fortune des Rougons was, as others have warned, a difficult place to begin even if a natural one. I ended up getting bogged down for a while which may be why it took me the longest it's taken for a while to finish a novel in French but at the end of it all, even if it's quite a scrappy and exposition-heavy origin story, I have to admire Zola's achievement with this book. Contained in this novel is a full accounting of the roots of an entire family*, their dreams, ambitions, personalities, feuds and schemes; the fall of the Second Republic and the birth of the Second Empire in its wake, buttressed by the most grasping social climbers of the French middle classes; and two plots both of which intertwine and contrast to give a full portrait of an era of revolutionary change.

If it's not a great novel as such it's still an enjoyable one, especially if you understand the politics and society of France at the time - the Rougon-Macquarts are already demonstrating themselves to be quite a brood of vipers by the end of this first chapter in their story, and there's enough betrayals and plots to keep the intrigue in this novel even if the number of sympathetic characters so far is low (how easily political allegiances shift and transform according to outside circumstance and convenience alone is an enjoyably cynical part of Zola's perspective on the petit-boureoisie milieu of the tale).

* I ended up having to keep an improvised family tree by my bedside to keep track of things and will probably continue to update and expand it as I work through these novels - recommended if you're crazy enough to try and do this project too. ( )

Io voglio spiegare come una famiglia, un piccolo gruppo di persone, si comporta in una societa’, sviluppandosi per dar vita a dieci, a venti individui che, a prima vista, sembrano profondamente diversi, ma che, analizzati, si rivelano intimamente connessi gli uni agli altri. Come in fisica la gravita’, cosi’ l’eredita’ ha le sue leggi. (3)

Secondo l’opinione comune, i Rougon-Macquart rivelavano la loro vera natura divorandosi tra loro; (131)

Lontano si snodavano le strade maestre, tutte bianche per il chiarore lunare. La colonna degli insorti, nella campagna fredda e chiara, riprese la sua marcia eroica. Era come un’ampia corrente d’entusiasmo. Il soffio di epopea che trascinava Miette e Silvere, questi grandi fanciulli avidi di amore e di liberta’, faceva dileguare, con una generosita’ sublime, le commedie vergognose dei Macquart e dei Rougon. (183)

Pascal fissava uno sguardo penetrante sula demente, su suo padre, su suo zio; il distacco dello studioso aveva il sopravvento: studiava quella madre e quei figli con l’attenzione di un naturalista che osserva le metamorfosi d’un insetto. E pensava a quella discendenza d’una famiglia, d’un ceppo da cui dipartono rami diversi, e la cui linfa acre trasporta gli stessi germi fin nei ramoscelli piu’ lontani, curvati in modo diverso a seconda che si trovino all’ombra o al sole. Per un istante, come alla luce d’un lampo, a Pascal sembro’ di vedere il futuro dei Rougon-Macquart, come una muta di cani lanciati contro la preda e satollati, in uno sfavillio d’oro e di sangue. (340-1)

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This was a re-read of the first novel in Zola's 20 novel Rougon-Macquart cycle about the lives of two related families in the Second Empire period of Napoleon III between 1851-70. When I first read this almost exactly ten years ago, I wasn't too impressed and found it dull and slow moving. I have a more positive opinion now, and quite enjoyed most of the interplay between the generations of the two branches of the family, especially the opportunism and desire for fame and fortune of Pierre Rougon, dominated by his wife Felicite, the tragic backstory of his mother "Aunt" Dide, and the youthful romanticism, both political and emotional, of Silvere and Miette. While some of the manoeuvrings around the fictional town of Plassans dragged a bit, for the most part I enjoyed the story and feel an appetite now to tackle the following books in the series, which I did not feel ten years ago. At one point, the families are described colourfully as "a pack of unbridled, insatiate appetites amidst a blaze of gold and blood". Once the Coup d'Etat has brought the Emperor to power and buried the second French Republic, it is the Rougons' time to prosper: "Their appetites, sharpened by thirty years of restrained desire, now fell to with wolfish teeth. These fierce, insatiate wild beasts, scarcely entering upon indulgence, exulted at the birth of the Empire — the dawn of the Rush for the Spoils. The Coup d’Etat, which retrieved the fortune of the Bonapartes, also laid the foundation for that of the Rougons." ( )