MJ Nicholls's Reviews > Doctor Pascal

I started reading the Rougon-Macquart sequence on 14 October 2011 (I have Goodreads to thank for the precision—the novel was The Drinking Den), finally completing the 20-strong epic on 18 June 2023. Reading this phenomenal sequence of classics over a long period was the most pleasurable way to tackle Zola, for patience and doggedness is required to wrestle with the more verbose, overblown elements of the Gallic Goliath’s oeuvre. Doctor Pascal concludes the epic with a codependent love story between an uncle and his niece, featuring a scheming mother, a pious servant, and a handy summary of the preceding nineteen works. The character of Pascal is a frustrating contradiction—supremely intelligent when magicking up vaccines in a pestle, too thick to shelter his manuscripts outside his own home away from his mother whose only wish is to destroy them. An exasperating, melodramatic end to an exasperating, magnificent, epochal cycle of classics. How would I rank the cycle from 1-20, you never asked? Let me tell you.

Rougon-Macquart RANKED (Best to Worst):

1. The Earth (La Terre)
2. The Drinking Den (L’Assommoir)
3. The Belly of Paris (La Ventre de Paris)
4. Germinal
5. The Debacle (La Débâcle)
6. The Beast Within (La Bête Humaine)
7. Pot Luck (Pot-Bouille)
8. The Masterpiece (L'Œuvre)
9. The Kill (La Curée)
10. The Ladies’ Paradise (Au Bonheur des Dames)
11. The Dream (Le Rêve)
12. The Bright Side of Life (La joie de vivre)
13. The Fortune of the Rougons (La Fortune des Rougon)
14. The Conquest of Plassans (La Conquête de Plassans)
15. Nana
16. Money (L'Argent)
17. A Love Story (Une page d'amour)
18. Doctor Pascal (Le Docteur Pascal)
19. His Excellency Eugene Rougon (Son Excellence Eugène Rougon)
20. The Sin of Abbé Moret (La Faute de l'Abbé Mouret)