It is not a book that shocks me to the heart, but definitely a book which paints a impressionism with words. It is the first book that I have ever read by Zola.
Rather than describing my feelings using the ideological words, such as capitalism or industrialism, which I truly detest, I would like to summarize this novel as a book written from the pure, maybe naive, heart of a child. Everything will move forward, you can feel, when reading the book, Zola had predestinated a fate for all his characters, just as Denise, the heroine, had forecasted the invincibility of the "big stores" like Paradise. Nothing will stop the historical trend, neither the obstinacy and the sadness of the small. Sacrifice is necessary in the face of the movement of the history. But, do not jump to the conclusion that Zola was leading us to a precarious trap where the future was doomed and dark, as what I perceive nowadays by myself; instead, for him, without any doubt and hesitation, what he, together with all the human-beings in the world, would welcome was a absolutely bright, shiny and ideal future, a paradise, or even a heaven on the earth. This is where Zola's pure positive attitude impressed me a lot.
The other good aspect about this book is its depiction of the sheer desire of people, especially women. On the appearance, it were women who were leading by their insatiable desire toward goods, notably clothes and other fancy stuff, that led their husbands and fathers to the edge of bankruptcy, and contributed to the great wealth of the store dealers who were exploiting them; meanwhile, on the deeper level, I was alarmed by the desire buried deeply in the human's nature. How should we deal with our own desire? How should we, at least I, avoid of being exploited by some invisible force who keeps trying to conjure up the deep buried desires and invent new ones? It is definitely a good lesson given by Zola through by the depiction of the buying and selling in the "Ladies' Paradise" that helps me to keep vigilant even toward myself.