Zola's masterful writing drags the reader through miner's muck. There is valid criticism that he is too fair to the pit bosses, but over and over I find myself loathing their willful ignorance.

Maheude's transformation is dramatic; leads the destruction and reconstruction of the women. No character is unimportant, no event is accidental. It is a nearly perfect work.

The book depicts the conditions of French miners in the late nineteenth century. Using an outsider who takes up with the miners community, the rather fetching and ideal driven Etienne. With Etienne your able to see a neat cross-section into the deprivations of the labouring classes at the time but also their sometimes emotionally driven sense of solidarity and collective purpose.

The main core of the book is based on inter-personal interactions and events surrounding a labour strike, but it conveys well the political climate of the early labour movement with its nods to Marx, Bakunin and Proudhon but also the direction and purpose of a youthful Social Democracy particularly with its upbeat ending.

See also: my review of [b: Cousin Bette|59144|Cousin Bette|Honoré de Balzac|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388880372l/59144._SY75_.jpg|1028809].

An assigned reading for a college class. My "classics" digestion enzyme was not being secreted. I failed to appreciate it.

A classic? Perhaps. A masterful depiction of its era? Perhaps. At all enjoyable? Not by me and certainly not at the time.

And once again: it seems there are so many positive reviews of the text that I ought re-visit it. (We'll see...)

Well this was upsetting lol