Zola, Pot-Bouille and Bonheur des Dames

So I finished reading the two last books in the Rougon-Macquart series, Pot-Bouille, a dismembering of the French bourgeoisie, it's that acerbic, and something about a ladies' shop in Paris, Bonheur des dames. Neither are particularly memorable, but the description of a birth by a woman alone at home in Pot-bouille just leaps right off the page. The true but never-mentioned excrement which accompanies birth pangs was described dryly, but with great naturalism. All in all, there are certain books that are riveting, like the famous Germinal, but otherwise I repeat my complaint that Zola is a polemicist, and not a novelist, and that he fails to bring most characters to life, to make us care about his characters. Ah, and Balzac did that so effortlessly, even when the plot twists weren't remotely believable. I suppose only Tolstoy had it all: plot, character, telling detail.