Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Vatard Sisters

The Vatard Sisters

Babcock, James C.
Huysmans, J. -K

Paperback

Series: Studies in Romance Languages, Book 26

Classic FictionHistorical FictionLiterary Fiction

ISBN10: 0813153131
ISBN13: 9780813153131
Publisher: Univ Pr Of Kentucky
Published: Jul 15 2014
Pages: 184
Weight: 0.53
Height: 0.42 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English

Les Soeurs Vatard, described by its author as a lewd but exact slice of life, was J.-K. Huysmans' second novel. Huysmans abandoned poetry and turned to the novel at a time when the works of Emile Zola were intensely controversial; Les Soeurs Vatard is dedicated to Zola by his fervent admirer and devoted friend.
In it, Huysmans vividly depicts the scene that for his generation of French writers stood for the contemporary world: the brutal, teeming life of the industrial quarters of Paris in the 1870s.

Huysmans' Vatard sisters are Désirée, an urchin of fifteen, a brunette with large, pale eyes that were somewhat crossed, plump without being fat, attractive and clean; and Céline, the carouser, a big girl with clear eyes and hair the color of straw, a solid, vigorous girl whose blood raced and danced in her veins. The two are part of that bizarre race of young women who work as bookbinders, whose lives revolve around the gaslighted bindery works, the gaudy shop windows, and cheap wineshops that Huysmans describes with minute and colorful detail. His precisely observed sketches show that Naturalism as practiced by Buysmans had none of Zola' s emphasis on scientific determinism, but centered primarily on the faithful rendering of what he described as living persons in real milieus.

The Vatard Sisters is the first English translation of Les Soeurs Vatard.

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