Les Miserables (Victor Hugo)

Victor Hugo (translated Norman Denny)

Les Miserables

Very daunting when I picked it up and reading about how much Hugo digresses from the main story, indeed it starts by telling you that the first part (i.e. 50 odd pages) are not strictly relevant to the story. However, from page one I'm hooked on the descriptive writing and don't mind reading about a bishop who's only purpose seems to be to introduce one of the main characters. Having now finished this epic I thoroughly enjoyed both the story and the digressions. The story is an epic covering generations of various characters with the inevitable interweaving of lives. From that point of view it's a cross between Tolstoy and Dickens. The former's family characterisation and romantic (in both meanings) descriptions and the latter's analysis of the human character especially those who have been dealt a poor deal by society and the troubles that they face including how turning to crime is not as evil as one might assume. Of course as in Dickens there are those who you think are truly evil (if you believe in that) with the main protagonist with that label turning out to be truly evil. There is a strong philosophical thread throughout the novel both directly related to the characters and also in the long digressions. I won't give any spoilers lets just say that there was a lot less story related to the cover than I'd expected. There again it is over 1,200 pages. Digressions seem to be where Hugo wants to give his opinion on, or show his knowledge of, various topics which he's included in a novel as otherwise few would read them. A couple have been relegated to the back of the book as appendices in this edition but I read them where they were in the book anyway as they are only a few pages (comparatively) and other less relevant digressions were included in the body of the story. For instance there are 15 pages about the history of the sewers of Paris. Not many pages in this book but by my calculation about a fifth of the length of Animal Farm. The ending is full of pathos, as would expect for the period, and to my mind a little too sentimental for my liking but, again, typical of the period.

Matt. You would have been proud of me. And we would have laughed about it. Did you ever read it? Better than Moby Dick. RIP.