'in this life, even if you don't ask for much you still end up with bugger all!' In a run-down quarter of Paris, Gervaise Macquart struggles to earn a living an

CHAPTER I. Gervaise had waited up for Lantier until two in the morning. Then, shivering from having remained in a thin loose jacket, exposed to the fresh air at

Presents the seventh novel in the Rougon-Macquart cycle -- the story of a woman's struggle for happiness in working-class Paris.

French realism's immortal siren crawled from the gutter to the heights of society, devouring men and squandering fortunes along the way. Zola's 1880s classic is