McTeague
A dentist in San Francisco marries a woman who wants nicer things, and the novel follows the couple into greed, violence and the desert. Norris wanted to write American naturalism on the scale of Zola, and this is his most concentrated attempt.
The famous ending in Death Valley is brutal and unforgettable, and the novel's view of character is deterministic to the point of cruelty. Norris died at thirty-two, and it is impossible to read him without wondering what he would have written next. The San Francisco chapters are vivid and unglamorous.
Public-domain status
First published in 1899. In the United States, works published before 1930 are in the public domain. In the European Union the general term is the life of the author plus 70 years; Frank Norris died in 1902, so this work has been free to republish there since 1973.
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