Nana

“Great depravity leads to great piety.”

Such an entertaining read. How can you not like this book? Sure, its misogyny is over-the-top, but the male characters don't look so great, either.

Toward the end of the book are the inklings of the excess and “perversion” of the Decadent movement to come in France a few years later:

“Woman dominated him with the jealous tyranny of a God of wrath, terrifying him but granting him moments of joy as keen as spasms, in return for hours of hideous torments, visions of hell and eternal tortures. He stammered out the same despairing prayers as in church, and above all suffered the same fits of humility peculiar to an accursed creature crushed under the mud from which he has sprung.”

(Ugh, don't you hate it when that happens?!)