mrsumitdhiman

Ivan said I should write three reviews of this book: one about what I actually thought about it; one about what I would have thought about it if it had a modern editor; and one about what I would have thought about it if I'd read it at the time that it was written. And it's true that there's something a little unfair about reviewing a book 150 years after it was published, with modern sensibilities coming into play. Still, that's all I have. I was tempted to give Les Mis four stars, because in the places that it was good, it was really good. Still, I couldn't feel justified giving that high a star rating to something that dragged in SO many places, and that I often found myself dreading to read. There are LONG passages that take you away from the main thread of the story, whether to go off on a tangent about the Battle of Waterloo or to give Victor Hugo the chance to pontificate on his own political views or to justify why he wrote the book a certain way. Because of all this, this might be one of the books where it's justified to read the abridged version, although I'm a little ambivalent about that because I'm not sure what is cut -- and it seems important to at least know that Victor Hugo was clearly aiming to accomplish something greater than merely tell a story, but to paint a complete picture of the France in which it takes place (which is why I think a lot of those long passages might have been more compelling when they were read in its original time and place). Still, any modern reader is going to have to do some skimming/self-abridging to make it through. (To give you an idea: the book is 1200 pages long; the musical is 3 hours long. And believe it or not, the musical doesn't leave much out -- *that's* how much padding is in this baby.) Now, where it's good: Victor Hugo's descriptions of characters, and their consistency of characterization throughout, are amazing. If you come away from this book not loving Jean Valjean, you may not have a heart. And the themes he examines -- the plight of the poor, the possibility and power of redemption, the pain of having your deepest convictions challenged -- keep this a powerful and relevant read even today. In particular, I appreciated his sensitivity to the plight of women in his time, even though his characterization of Cosette revealed that he still had a ways to go in understanding women as complete people beyond stereotypical ideals. But even with this flaw, the place where this book really shines is in its depiction of the bond between Jean Valjean and Cosette, and its examination of the minutia of emotions involved in loving a child and having to, eventually, let that child go. And I wouldn't want a single word of that to be abridged. So, was it worth a year's worth of reading? I'd say yes, I'm glad that I've read it -- but I'm also extremely glad to be done, and won't be picking up anything this hefty for a while! Luckily, the book didn't end on a depressing note as I'd feared, so I didn't feel that I put in all that time and emotion just to feel betrayed in the end.

2023-02-20 23:37