Les Misérables

Il m'aura fallu plus de trois semaines pour lire ce gros pavé de Victor Hugo, peut-être son oeuvre la plus connue, mais je ne regrette pas ces longues heures passées avec Jean Valjean, Fantine, Cosette, l'inspecteur Javert, Marius, sans oublier l'inoubliable Gavroche.

Victor Hugo nous a offert ici une oeuvre majeure, magistrale. Il se permet régulièrement de longues digressions, mais certaines sont presque plus passionnantes encore que le récit principal. Malgré quelques longueurs, le résultat est incroyable, saisissant. Assurément l'un des chefs d'oeuvre de la littérature française.

So I finally finished Les Miserables. It took me five months to listen to the whole thing, a 60-hour audio book. There were several points where I nearly gave up, and one where I actually announced on Facebook that I had given up. But I went back to it and I'm ever so glad that I did.

Let me start by saying that this is a fantastic book. There were times when I was slogging through some of the digressions that I wondered just how this could possibly have been considered a classic. But now I know.

At first, I sensed a similarity with Crime & Punishment, which just happens to have been published in the same decade as Les Miserables, as indeed was War & Peace, which I have also read. The part where Jean Valjean, as Monsieur Madeleine, is fighting with his conscience about going to rescue the man who has been arrested as Jean Valjean and then his journey there, fraught with difficulty.

It's been interesting to read some of the reviews on Goodreads after finishing the book. They are almost all five stars and there are a few instances where readers have read the abridged version and then gone back to read the unabridged and enjoyed it ever so much more. As I was listening to it, there were many occasions when I wished I had downloaded the abridged version instead. I mean come on, pages and pages of description about the Paris sewers? The whole Waterloo bit? I honestly struggled through these parts. I wonder if it would have been easier to read than to listen to.

Anyway, I listened to the last 8 hours or so in a couple of days, at first because I just wanted it finished and out of the way, but then because it was just so good that I didn't want to stop. I had guessed how the novel would end, but that didn't spoil the ending at all. It was so well written that I was left with a feeling of elation that has lasted through to the following day as I write this.

Suffice it to say that I am very glad that I persevered with this and got to the end. I actually would quite like to read it again right now as I'm sure I would enjoy it a lot more second time around.

Five stars.

An emotionally turbulent story, and a force of moral philosophical ideas. Hugo's writing in this book shows why he is not just among the 19th century's greatest writers but one of its greatest minds over all.
I may not agree with all of his philosophies, but I commend him for how eloquently he addresses the big questions. What does it mean to be a good person? What is it to be miserable, and how can we find joy in a world so full of misery? All this is addressed completely all while telling a heart-wrenching tale.
And if you think you know the story because you watched the musical or the movie, no. You don't. Some of the most central characters in the book get maybe a line or two if that in the movie, and the way all the characters intermingle is genius.

All that said, I would highly recommend reading a quality abridgement. You can cut out massive chunks of this book without any loss of quality to the story or even the philosophies within this book. For example, there are about 8 chapters about the history of Paris' sewage system, and 5 chapters about why it's ok to write in slang. If you skip over those entirely, you would lose nothing.

I highly recommend this to anyone with an interest in the history of France or an interest in moral philosophy. For just the touching story though, abridge.

I did NOT, in fact, read this book. Rather, I read some really good fan fiction that was equivalent to the length of this book, and the whole thing is much less embarrassing if I add it to my GR challenge this way.

I'm sure Les Misérables is a fantastic read. I hope to get to it at some point in my lifetime.

This book is so... long. I find it hard to explain. The plot is excellent and the tangents and digressive parts are also great but they are hard to experience together and that's what makes this book so darn long.
In terms of the plot I do not love ending, but the journey is so emotional and well written.
The tangents were sort of a slog to read through but there are some very interesting points and I can see why they are influential.

After 5 months I have finally finished reading Les Misérables!! And I now understand why this is called a masterpiece. There is so much detail and so much background info included in this book to make the readers understand the characters and their motives. And that does not only include the main characters of the plot but all those that have a hand in it, even if it was just one small scene in which they interacted with the main characters. And if someone told be that before I have read this book, I'd be like, why would I care about all this? Just give me the main characters, the story and the plot. But I have to say that I really love the structure of this book!! It made me care about these side characters and their stories and it was so quite exciting to me finding out why we are focusing on them later. I am still processing this book, the last part had a lot going on, so I managed to read it all in one sitting.

I must have had twenty people tell me this book is their favorite book ever. One thousand four hundred pages seemed like a lot, so I decided to go abridged. Not sure one should ever try abridged and translated. (When Marius, in the last third of the story, finds a sign saying “Remove”, for example, I was completely lost. Not “remove”, I learned later, but “go away”.)

What a story, nevertheless. The plot centers on a young man, Valjean, who steals a loaf of bread to feed his sister's family and is thrown in prison for this. Once released, Valjean is denied work, for he must present a passport tainted by his time in prison. A priest finds him in the streets and takes him in. Valjean steals the valuable objects from the church and runs away, but he is captured. When confronted by the priest, the priest denies Valjean stole the objects and even gives Valjean additional items, reminding Valjean of a (false) promise he made to the priest to turn his life around.

If this intrigues, then read the whole novel. It's a series of these sorts of reversals and twists of fortune and little acts of grace. Absolutely fascinating.

I suppose, the only thing I can say in so few words would be this: if you appreciate fine literature, via exquisite characters, history, philosophy, battle between ethics and morals, love and hate, expansive national politics juxtaposed and at war with the lives of mere children ... if you value just such an experience, worthy of the title “epic,” in this case you will not be disappointed.

I may never be able to concisely articulate my feelings on this book. A just review would require many conversations, over specific parts of the book, at different times.

Lastly, a word of caution. This book, more than perhaps any other story I have read, is worthy of its title.

Les Miserables is a fascinating story. Each character is very unique, and all of their experiences are delights to follow. With many historical flashbacks to Napoleon, in addition to the evident influences of French politics at the time, this book is a quintessential historical novel that history fans and novel lovers will love.

Like War and Peace, Hugo incorporates personal stories in a wider conflict. Nonetheless, these personal stories are much better written and received than Tolstoy's, in my opinion.