"What paradise exactly have you created in your dreams? How do you imagine the world?"

Angelique Rougon (unacknowledged daughter of that supreme gossip Sidonie Rougon from [b:The Kill|3888856|The Kill|Émile Zola|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1475574769l/3888856._SY75_.jpg|839934], which is not required reading here) flees her foster family at age 9 and takes refuge with a childless couple in the town of Beaumont, a couple of hours from Paris. The couple have a comfortable home, from their long family history as embroiderers, but are themselves poor. The girl grows up in a happy family, becoming a renowned local embroideress. Her life is lived entirely within the confines of her home, the garden, and the church next door, and she lives much of it in the pages of one book - The Golden Legend, tales of the great miracles of the saints, tales which her mind sews together into a fantasy in which she, the pure Angelique, will find love with a handsome prince and live happily ever after. And then, at 16, the dream starts to come true...

A gentle fairytale of a novel, The Dream is the most unexpected of the 20 novels in Zola's Rougon-Macquart series. It's a very quick read, clocking in at 180 pages with only five characters of note. The love between Angelique and Felicien is rejected by both of their parents for reasons of social status and tragic memories - the memories of Felicien's father, mourning his long-lost wife, and those of Angelique's foster parents, whose own marriage - in opposition to their parents - caused them a life of pain. Like all of the series' novels, Zola limits his geographic narrative to a very specific place, but here it feels less claustrophobic than ever before. Although Angelique does not have access to the wide open plains of Earth, she is freed by her dreams, by the lengthy excursions we take - via the narrative voice - into the histories of the saints. The novel weaves together three core symbols - embroidery, architecture, and the accoutrements of the Catholic church, as we find ourselves lost inside the determined but naive mind of the teenage girl at its centre.

There is a tension at the heart of the book between the naturalism to which Zola subscribed and the fantastical, which looms over the unlikely plot twists and the miracles and tragedies which take place herein. Perhaps this novel itself is a human tragedy, the story of a happiness constantly thwarted by the fears and misplaced hopes of its characters. Or perhaps the novel itself is a dream, as Zola suggests on the final page, and we should view it as a kind of palate-cleanser between two weighty novels in the series: the grotesque drama of [b:Earth|27310205|Earth (Les Rougon-Macquart, #15)|Émile Zola|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1451244935l/27310205._SY75_.jpg|1810722] and the brutal thriller, [b:La Bête humaine|6251724|La Bête humaine|Émile Zola|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388366273l/6251724._SY75_.jpg|101404]. (The novel was a late addition to Zola's plan; indeed, the family tree he had published only five years previously did not include Angelique at all.)

I would perhaps not recommend this to Zola newcomers. Not only does it stand in opposition to his usual style, but it is ultimately a fairly slight entry in the canon. The psychology of the characters is deftly handled, as was the author's trademark, but perhaps Angelique herself never quite coalesces as a protagonist, or perhaps the tonal shift at novel's end - despite having been prepared for - is just too jarring for modern readers. Still, The Dream does not deserve its dismissive 20th century reputation. (After an initial period of popularity, which included a very successful operatic adaptation, the novel was all but forgotten. Its 1893 translation remained the only English-language version available until the 21st century, which hindered its popularity considerably.) Paul Gibbard's 2018 translation for Oxford World's Classics is sensitive and atmospheric, revelling in the clash between the medieval tone of Angelique's town and the 19th century reality of her context.

An intriguing confection. ( )

This relatively short, simple love story is one of the quiet breathing-spaces in the Rougon-Macquart cycle, like Une page d'amour and La joie de vivre; it gives us the chance to recover and reflect a little in between the exertions of La Terre and La Bête Humaine.

Zola casts the story in almost Pre-Raphaelite romantic terms: a lovely young orphan who spends her days embroidering vestments in the medieval house of her adoptive parents in the shadow of the cathedral in a sleepy country town (a fictional version of Cambrai); the handsome young artisan who falls in love with her, and turns out to be a disguised nobleman; a climbable balcony; disapproving parents; religious processions; a deathbed scene... You get the picture.

Needless to say, there's more to it, although you perhaps wouldn't notice if you weren't pre-warned by the other Zola novels you've read. Angélique (we're told, but she isn't) is the illegitimate daughter of the shady businesswoman Sidonie Rougon, whom we met only 14 books ago in La curée. As such, she's guaranteed not to be 100% mentally fit, and in her case this expresses itself through her obsessive interest in the medieval saints and virgins of the Golden Legend. She manages, with Zola's active connivance, to live in a mental universe that shuts out any kind of intellectual input more recent than the early renaissance. Disguised noble suitors, balconies, inexplicable illnesses and mystical cures are all perfectly normal, but she's completely incapable of imagining any kind of story that continues beyond the wedding ceremony, with predictable (but almost metatextual) consequences.

Zola is bashing religion nearly as hard as romanticism: both are part of the fatal Dream that conspires to destroy people's lives (in another world, he might almost have given this book the title The dominant ideology!). But he's also enjoying himself with lots of lyrical descriptions of the embroiderers' work, their tools, their subjects, the language they use, and he doesn't waste the opportunity to tell us about the cathedral and its stained glass, either. A fairly slight book, but with some good stuff in it. ( )

Despite The Dream striking me as abrupt, I enjoyed the descriptions; architecture and embroidery occupy the majority of such. Again Zola tips his hat to Balzac. Still, I couldn't shake the thought upon completion, that the novel could've been Thérèse Raquin's last thoughts after she swallowed her poison. ( )

Finally finished it as an adult and loved it. The descriptions of Ecclesiastical embroidery by the Bishop were outstanding in their detail of thread-of-gold and how skilled one needed to be to stitch with it. Also well-done were the descriptions of Angelique's embroidery skills for the then-highest level of embroidery.

I better understood this time around the language, the love story, the descriptions of the history of the home, the family, and Angelique's finding." Zola's kindness with these characters relative to his other books is touching and once again reaches deep into the heart of characters and their motives. And it helped my French remain at the forefront of my brain." ( )

Romanzo del XIX secolo in lingua francese