This excruciating Naturalist novel was reportedly the inspiration for James M. Cain’s ‘The Postman Always Rings Twice,’ and you cannot help seeing the parallels as you read what one observer calls the first noir novel. (https://shrineodreams.wordpress.com/tag/postman-always-rings-twice/) Therese Raquin is dejectedly fulfilling her obligations to her cousin-husband Camille and his mother in a grim haberdashery in Paris, when would-be artist and sometime-clerk Laurent comes into their life. Therese and Laurent begin an affair, then fall into a plot to get rid of the troublesome husband. All of Zola’s characters in this book act because of irresistible drives and urges that they don’t understand and cannot turn away. Once the deed is done, Therese and Laurent are inextricably bound together—“to the end of the line.” Their fear, guilt, and regret turn their relationship poisonous immediately, and Zola describes their life together in excruciating detail. The animal instincts of these two transplanted peasants is intensified and corrupted by urban life and they are trapped in an unbearable existence until they find the one way out. The book was an outrage when it was published and the reader can still see why.