I discovered this book through a recommendation from Amazon when I was ordering several turn-of-the 20th century novels. Written in 1899, by a young author who died in 1902 at the age of 32, the setting is San Francisco, the characters are flawed, and the story is filled with strong brutish images of greed.

The main character, McTeague (who is never given a first name throughout the book) was brought up in the mining camps, and apprenticed himself to a traveling dentist at a young age. When the story opens he is a dentist, living in a small apartment house and earning a living through this trade. When the innocent Trina needs some dental work, he falls in love with her and wins her away from his best friend Marcus whose seethes with anger and wants revenge.

McTeague and Trina plan to marry and at first are delighted when Trina wins $5,000 in a lottery. But as the story unfolds, the couple's happiness becomes tainted as Trina hoards her money. Other characters are introduced to support the theme of greed. There's the Mexican maid who sells whenever she can steal to the Jewish man who lusts for gold. There is the elderly man and elderly woman who are too shy to admit their attraction for each other. And then there are the dogs which always seem to be in the background and support the animalistic nature of the evolving plot.

There is success followed by utter failure and the rapidly changing relationship between McTeague and Trina into that of sadism and masochism. At times the book is hard to read. But it's also hard to put down. At the beginning I was a bit frustrated by the author's long descriptions of scenery and furnishings and let my eyes slide past them to look for the action by the characters. But the story is about things owned and things lost. And so there was a reason and an importance to all those long descriptions.

The conclusion is raw, brutal and inevitable. It was also perfect.

I consider this book a little-known hidden gem. I'm glad I discovered it and found out that novels written during this time period are not all about manners and the sheltered world of the elite.

I know this book is supposedly a classic, and all that, but I didn't get it.
I was looking forward to reading this book, and started it..follows a dentist practicing in San Francisco.. I didn't relate to the characters, didn't like the story, nothing about it hooked me.. Maybe if I had been alive in 1899, I would have loved it!

This is a profoundly naturalistic novel, fixed on the dark side of the human species, his vices like jealousy, avarice and greed. `(Alcohol) roused the man, or rather the brute in the man, and now not only roused it, but goaded it to evil.'
Its philosophy is determinism: people follow their desires `blindly, recklessly, furious and raging at every obstacle' in `the changeless order of things'.
This determinism of no escape is perfectly illustrated in the last image: `As McTeague rose to his feet, he felt a pull at his right wrist. Looking down, he saw that Marcus in that last struggle had found the strength to handcuff their wrists together.'
The picture is sometimes overdone, a caricature: `The hideous yelling of a hurt beast, the squealing of a wounded elephant.'

And ultimately, the novel is less impressive than `The Pit' or `The Octopus', because it lacks a framework. People are acting as in a void. The novel is a pure illustration of characters. There is no social conditioning; e.g., the fact that a new legislation is introduced to regulate the profession of dentist is mainly used as a vengeance, out of jealousy.

But, all in all, it is (still) a courageous book and a very worth-while read.

The novel starts out almost almost farce-like with the bumbling oaf of a dentist McTeague, his clever, good-natured friend Marcus, and the sweet, innocent Trina caught in a seemingly benign love triangle. But it quickly turns into a dark story of greed, lust, and trickery which is both comical and engrossing in its absurdities, while at the same time horrific in the undeniably truths it reveals about human nature.

Though I love novels that are thoroughly crafted so that themes and recurring symbols are not terribly difficult to dissect, I felt Norris to be a little too blunt and overt in what he wanted to be taken from events. Each character represents only one or two exaggerated qualities, which makes for an intense and profound plot, but not a terribly finessed one. In effect, the novel does not show what it is like to be a complex, everyday human, but rather what would happen if humans allowed themselves to be governed by their animal instincts, which reminds us just how much of that animal lurks within our everyday selves.

I read McTeague for a class, and the professor premised it by saying that it had "the greatest ending of any story, in any language, in the history of the world." I'm not entirely sure to what extent I believe that, but it's definitely an end worth getting to.

I purchased this book because my daughter was reading it in college. I was not familiar with either the title or the author, but a quick web search allowed me to rectify that shortcoming quickly. It is a gut wrenching view into the early city life of San Francisco. Marriage, money, and ignorance are the main charaters presented through names that soon become the face of the story.

Norris, the realist, doesn't waste time on the way the world could be, and he doesn't even speculate on the way things are; he rather cuts to the reality of the time and, like a snapshot, gives us that which an observant eye would see if present. The violent ignorance manifested by the characters stuns, and I was amazed and intrigued by the actions of individuals I had become close to through the events of the story.

Be forewarned, those sensitive to sterotypical descriptions of race will be shocked, and those without patience for the actions of brutally ignorant settlers will be sickened. Nevertheless, for a picture of the probable behavior of the settlers of the west, this is a fine read.