Nana

We first meet Nana as the lead in an operetta at the Théâtre des Variétés. Everyone in Paris is talking about her, and we see right away that though Nana cannot act or sing, there is something about Nana that draws men to her. In every case, the men drawn to her lose everything in their attempts to keep her for themselves. As the novel continues, Nana goes from being a street prostitute to a high-priced call girl supported by rich men, by men of position and power. But Nana is easily bored, and she runs through the money of a man and discards him. Eventually she brings many men to ruin, and she ends up dying a horrible death.

Nana, like many women I have known, depends on her beauty and sex appeal to get along in life. She treats people like objects to be bought and thrown away; Nana is truly an awful human being.

I can't say I enjoyed reading this book. I was happiest reading the last pages in which Nana's corpse is gruesomely described, and even then I couldn't really take satisfaction in seeing a terrible end for this woman who was treated so badly as a child and as a young woman and who was never really loved for herself.

Nana is a picture of a world I have never visited before, a world I would rather not visit again, a world I wish did not exist.