The novel follows the adventures of 22-year-old Octave Mouret, who moves into the building and takes a salesman's job at a nearby shop, The Ladies' Paradise (Au Bonheur des Dames).

His failure with Madame Hédouin prompts him to quit his job, and he goes to work for Auguste Vabre in the silk shop on the building's ground floor.

Octave and Berthe are eventually caught but over the course of several months, the community tacitly agrees to forget the affair and live as if nothing had happened, thereby restoring the veneer of respectability.

Octave is the son of first cousins Marthe Rougon and François Mouret and great-grandson of Adelaïde Fouque (Tante Dide), the ancestress from whom the family members inherit varying degrees of what today might be called obsessive-compulsive disorder.

This aspect of his personality is explored further in Au Bonheur des Dames, the next novel, which finds Octave the owner of a giant department store catering to female desire.

In addition to examining Octave as representative of the Rougon-Macquart line, Zola explores the effects of personal history and environment on the other residents of the apartment building.

There have been other English translations since (as Piping Hot!, Pot Luck, Restless House and Lesson in Love), the most recent being by Brian Nelson for Oxford World's Classics (1999).