Most of this book is quite happy and uplifting, full of noble and high-minded pronouncements about the role of art and the demands it places on the artist, wise sayings about life in general and the question of how far should an artist go to gain recognition, plus an initially idyllic love story. It is also interesting to see what became of Claude, the carefree painter glimpsed briefly in "Le Ventre De Paris/The Underbelly Of Paris" and contrast his fate with that of his younger brother, Etienne, from the previous Rougon-Macquart volume, the blockbuster "Germinal". Zola's cameo role in the plot as the writer, Sandoz, helps provide stability as the various characters inevitably break down under the pressure and anguish of artistic creation or compromise their ideals for worldly riches. However, the ending tends to undermine the whole book. The story goes on for too long (even beyond the end of the Second Empire itself, which Zola gave himself as the time-span of the Rougon-Macquarts' activities). It seems as if the writer did not know how to end his tale, so after several false build-ups we are left with a suicide by hanging as in the twelfth volume in the series. A good read on the whole, but this book could have been even better.
