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I bought and read L'Assommoir (The Dram Shop) a few years ago. Let me quote from the back cover.

With its naturalistic description and street argot, L'Assommoir vividly evokes the poverty and squalor beneath the superficial glamour of Parisian life under the Second Empire. But in telling the story of the rise and downfall of the laundress Gervaise Macquart, Zola surmounts his moral and social intentions. For L'Assommoir is, in the words of Robin Buss, a novel that is 'marvellous, warm and human...with a tragic heroine who is among the most touching and credible creations in all the literature of the nineteenth century'.

While in Buns & Nipple last weekend, I saw a Zola book I didn't recognise, called The Drinking Den. That sounds a lot like L'Assommoir, but surely Penguin wouldn't publish the same book with two titles. Let me read the back of the book to be sure.

Abandoned by her lover and left to bring up their two children alone, Gervaise Macquart has to fight to earn an honest living. When she accepts the marriage proposal of Monsier Coupeau, it seems as though she is on the path to a decent, respectable life at last. But with her husband's drinking and the unexpected appearance of a figure from her past, Gervaise's plans begin to unravel tragically...

Sure, the women's names are the same, but it's been over two years since I read the book -- that isn't what sticks. What sticks is the weird plot summary. The "figure from her past" turns out to be the father of her children, and is a principal character at the beginning of the book. Had he been described as such, it would have jogged my memory, unlike the bete noir of the second book.

The translation is the same, and the cover art is the same. Obviously, I wasn't paying much attention. However, for this book, with an entirely new ISBN, the back cover now carries a sensationalistic description of the book. It's not an exciting book. It's a bleak grinding-out of degeneration.

Since I have two copies now, one is yours for the asking. :-)

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