by Émile Zola
First published 1867
Thérèse Raquin sits in her cramped apartment on the Passage du Pont-Neuf, watching her frail cousin and husband Camille cough through another dreary evening. Her monotonous existence breaks apart when Laurent, Camille's robust friend, begins visiting their home. Thérèse and Laurent fall into an intense physical relationship that consumes them both. Their desire grows so overwhelming that they decide Camille must die. After they murder him, the lovers expect freedom and happiness. Instead, guilt and paranoia poison their lives. They marry but find themselves tormented by visions of their victim. The dead man seems to watch them from every shadow. Their passion transforms into mutual hatred and fear. What began as liberation becomes a prison more suffocating than Thérèse's original marriage. Zola creates characters driven by their basest instincts, showing how unchecked desire leads to destruction. The novel strips away romantic illusions about love and reveals the animal nature lurking beneath civilized behavior.
Genres: fiction, drama, 20th-century, crime, psychological-thriller, 19th-century
Vibes: dark, emotional, intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Passage du Pont-Neuf, Paris
Period: 19th-Century
201 pages · Paperback · Penguin Books
Content warnings: murder, violence