Émile Zola

An old French peasant, Fouan, divides his farmland among his three children, only to be astonished by their ingratitude and greed

Terre

Jennifer Youard

Jesus Christ was a very flatulent man and in his house many winds did blow, arousing much merriment. No, there was never a dull moment where he was, for he never broke wind without making some funny remark to accompany it. He would have nothing to do with those timid ones, muffled between your buttocks, clumsey, half-hearted little puffs of air. His were always honest explosions, as rousng and hearty as a cannon; and each time, with a jaunty, free and easy lift of his thigh, he would call out to his daughter in a stern, commanding voice:

 'La Trouille, come here at once, for heaven's sake!' 

She would come rushing up and it would go off like a gunshot in the empty air with a vibration that made her jump. 

'Go on after it! And give it a bite to see if it's got any knots in it'

Sarah Sammis

I started reading Émile Zola's naturalist novels back in 7th grade. Germinal was on the list of books we were to read for independent study (as part of the English seminar class). I devoured the book in one night (one of those rare times where I will stay up to read a book to completion). That year I read every single book my local library had of Zola's.

It's now been about 20 years but I still remember those books with fondness. When a BookCrossing friend of mine offered up The Earth as a book ring, I jumped at the chance to read another novel by Zola. Had grown up commitments (like work, chores and my children) gotten in the way, I could have easily finished this book in one day. Not because it's short (it's 500 pages) but because Zola had such a way with words.

As the title implies, Earth is a story of the land more so that it is about any one person. While families come and go and land is passed from generation to generation (divided up, bought, sold and built over), the earth continues on its own schedule. There are years of feast and years of famine and these events don't happen at the convenience of the people living off the land.

One of my favorite books, Earth, follows the lives of a French peasant family in the late 1800s, and contains possibly the best fart description in literature. 

Terre

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