Les Misérables (Signet Classics) by Victor Hugo
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Book Reviews of Les Misérables (Signet Classics)
Book Review: Give me 100 pages and your life will change
Summary: 5 Stars
Here's my story about how I came to love this book.
If you're an average schmuck, with a job (not in academia), a life, and some curiosity, this review is for you.
If you're a literary blueblood, this review isnt for you. If your sworn enemy in life used to be your closest friend until they disagreed with you about whether Beowulf was a real person, be offended by my apathy and go away. If you had to turn off the TV newscasts on 9/11 because they were getting in the way of your arguments of whether sonnets devalue prose, just move on down to the next review.
I'm not a Literature buff. I tolerated English in high school and college because I had to, skipping what I could, skimming what I could get away with, and bluffing where needed. The thought picking up a stack of books and being dictated a marathon schedule to read them by still makes me bristle with quiet rebellion.
After school I ended up with a job with lots of down time between bursts of madness. I decided to make use of slow time going back and leisurely reading some of the 'classics' that I probably should have read before. Twain, Tolstoy, Dickens, Stowe and others pulled from the titles of Cliff's Notes (Hey, if Cliff says they're important....) Funny, but classics are much more palatable when they are read on a leisurely timeframe. Some I liked, some I couldn't care less about, but Les Miserables was, literally, a life-changing text.
I fell into Les Mis completely by accident. On day I forgot to pack whatever book I was working on that day and dug around looking for something other than Harlequins and Clancys. I picked up Hugo's Hunchback more by default than choice, liked the book, and in the closing commentary a writer mentioned that Hunchback was merely a prelude to his greatest work, Les Mis.
But starting Les Mis was a trial. French words scattered in the text were stumbling blocks. Hugo's text is a jealous mistress- it demands your full attention while reading. Les Mis is not in the genre of modern novels...grab the reader's attention in the first pages or lose them forever. I got bored reading about a bishop's daily routine. It takes 100 pages for the story to kick in. I stopped reading it twice, only to pick it back up a few months later and start all over.
But, as anyone who was read the novel can tell you, those first chapters are essential to the power of the story that follows.
I pushed my way through, got caught up in the current of the story once it began, and floated out the other side a better human being because of it.
Les Mis is a fantastic, detailed journey through human psychology. With 1400 pages, subplots, a cyclone of characters over decades of history, it can be difficult to distill WHAT the book is about into one word, but here's my try: Redemption.
Les Mis can be trying at times. Hugo is very detailed. He takes the reader though various side trips along the way. More than once he spends 100 pages setting up two pages of storyline. But his detail produces a work that is untouched in its ability to reveal the characters.
We see the difficulty in Valjean weighing wealth and praise from the multitudes against "one voice cursing in the darkness."
We see a character in Fantine pulled from innocence with a slow cruelty found nowhere else in lit: being turned for more misery (in surprising ways)like a pig on a split...with a reader helpless to intervene.
I see the police detective Javert as an embodiment of 'the system,'not necessarily as evil as one reviewer suggests. Hugo's penchant for overly-through descriptions adds multiple dimensions to what would otherwise be a flat character somewhere between a Napoleonic Joe Friday and Robobcop. We see Javert recite all the reasons he is right...and Hugo agrees with Javert... but we see that sometimes there is a larger truth than being 'right.'
Writing this a decade later I still see in my mind one of the most powerful images in the story: a middle-aged man and a small girl, both written off by the society around them, each with little in common with the other,walking down a deserted rural road, both clinging to each other because the other is all they have in the world.
For those who are used to watching all the loose ends coming together at the end of every hour of television, Les Mis will be a rude shift. It ends in a way that can be described as happy in its own sense though everyone doesnt ride off into the sunset or end with a joke and everyone laughing.
Frankly, I think it is impossible to appreciate the nuance of the musical without reading the unabridged text.
I finished reading Les Mis for the first time over 10 years ago. I still remember reading the last page, closing the book, and spending hours reflecting on the immensity of what I had experienced.
Girlfriend read it on my recommendation with similar effect.
Friend decided to stick it in his reading lists on my suggestion. When he started, he came to me frustrated with the slow start. "Is all this about the Bishop necessary to the story?" I said yes and he kept reading. A decade and hundreds of classic novels later still names Les Mis as his favorite book.
Shortly after reading it the first time, he recommended the book to yet another colleague looking for something to read to pass the time. As he handed it over, he issued a challenge: "Give me 100 pages, and your life will change."
He did, it did, and I now offer my friend's challenge to you!
Book Review: Read Les Mis before you die! Don't die before you read Les Mis!!
Summary: 5 Stars
If you know about Les Mis, you know it. If you haven't a clue, well, be prepared to be overwhelmed by a new universe that is waiting to be discovered.
Les Miserables shakes the soul, stirs the conscience, awakens the emotions, expands the thoughts, reaffirms the human nature, enlightens life.
In return for this reward, full and complete attention is demanded. The more you give to the book, the higher the enjoyment.
While the story is timeless, Les Mis's style is what makes it magical.
It is poetry in prose, fluidity in phrase, poignancy in observation, illuminating in description, satisfying in completeness; achieving a pinnacle in language use. If the translation is this, imagine the French original!
The recent complete reading was my second, after having first read it more than ten years ago, appreciating it even more deeply given my own life's experience to provide a keener perspective.
As an example of the finest writing in literature, here's an excerpt of one the best romantic exposition on Love I have come across, ever:
The reduction of the universe to a single being, the explosion of a single being into God, this is love.
Love is the salutation of the angel to the stars.
How sad the soul when it is sad from love!
What a void is the absence of the being who alone fills the world! Oh! How true that the beloved becomes God!
One would understand that God might might be jealous if the Father of all had not clearly made creation for the the soul, and the soul for love!
One glimpse of a smile under a white crepe hat with liliac veil is enough for the soul to enter the palace of dreams.
God is behind everything, but everything hides God. Things are black, creatures are opaque. To love a human being is to make her transparent.
Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees.
The future belongs still more to the heart than the mind. To love is the only thing that can occupy and fill up eternity. The infinite requires the inexhaustible.
Love partakes of the soul itself. It is of the same nature. Like the soul, it is a divine spark: it is incorruptible, indivisible, imperishable. It is a point of firewithin us, which is immortal and infinite, which nothing can limit and nothing can extinguish.
God can add nothing to the happiness of those who love one another, but to give them unending duration. After a life of love, an eternity of love is a superabundance, indeed; but to intensify the ineffable felicity that love gives to the soul in this world is impossible, even for God. God is the plenitude of heaven; love is the plenitude of man.
You look at a star for two reasons, because it is luminous and because it is impenetrable. You have at your side a softer radiance and a greater mystery, woman.
Whoever we may be, we all have our living, breathing beings. If they fail us, the air fails us, we stifle, then we die. To die for lack of love is horrible. The asphyxia of the soul.
If you are stone, be loadstone, if you are plant, be sensitive, if you are man, be love.
Nothing is enough for love. We have happiness, we wish for paradise; we have paradise, we wish for heaven.
O ye who love each other, all this is in love. Be wise enough to find it. As much as heaven, love has contemplation, and more than Heaven, passionate delight.
Love has its childinshness, the other passions have their pettiness. Shame on the passions that make man little! Honor to what makes him a child!
There is a strange thing- do you know what? I am in the night. There is a being who has gone away and carried the heavens with her.
Oh, to be laid side by side in the same tomb, hand clasped in hand, and from to time, in the darkness, to caress a finger gently, that would be enough for my eternity.
You who suffer because you love, love still more. To die of love is to live by it.
Love. A somber starry transfiguration is mingled with this torture. There is ecstasy in the agony.
O joy of the birds! It is because they have their nest that they have their song.
Love is a celestial breathing of the air of paradise.
Deep hearts, wise minds take life as God has made it; it is a long trial, an unintelligible preparation for an unknown destiny. This destiny, the true one, begins for man with the first step inside the tomb. Meantime, love and suffer, hope and contemplate. Woe, alas, to the one who shall have loved bodies, forms, appearances only. Death will take everything from him. Try to love souls, you shall find them again.
In the street I met a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat was threadbare- there were holes at his elbows; the water seeped through his shoes and the stars through his soul.
What a great thing, to be loved! What a greater thing still, to love! The heart becomes heroic through passion. It is no longer composed of anything but what is pure; it no longer rests on anything but what is elevated and great. An unworthy thought can no more spring up in it than a nettle on a glacier. The lofty and severe soul, inaccessible to common passions and common emotions, rising above the cloude and shadows of this world, its follies, its falsehoods, its hatreds, its vanities, its miseries, inhabits the blue of the skies, and no longer feels anything but the deep subterranean commotion of destiny, as the summit of the mountains feels the quaking of the earth.
If no one loved, the sun would go out.
Book Review: A vivid and captivating story of humanity in all its forms.
Summary: 5 Stars
This 1400+ page book follows the life of Jean Valjean, a man sentenced to nineteen years in prison for stealing a loaf of bread. The story begins in 1815, shortly after Jean Valjean is released from prison. He seeks lodging for the night with a bishop, but steals away the next morning with a set of valuable silver. Caught, he is brought back to the bishop, who proceeds to make him a gift of the silver, and tells him to use it to start a new life for himself. Due to constraints on review length, I will not go into a full synopsis here - I'm sure you can find a good overview of the story in one of the other numerous reviews here, but rather I will discuss some key aspects of the text.I really loved this book. Hugo's writing is excellent, and he does a superb job of tying all ends of the story together. Nothing in the book is irrelevant to the central plot, even if the connection cannot be seen immediately. Hugo captures the intricacies of human interaction, and how one event can set off a chain reaction. For example, if Monsieur Myriel, the Bishop of Digne, had not forgiven Jean Valjean for his theft and given the silver to him under the condition that Jean Valjean use it to make a better life for himself, then Jean Valjean would never have reformed. He would not have settled down, become Monsieur Madeleine, and built a fortune and good reputation. If this had not happened, then Jean Valjean would not have become connected with Fantine. He would not have become Cosette's benefactor. Cosette would have grown up with the abusive family to whose care she was entrusted, and would have lived a miserable life. She certainly would never have met Marius.
This book, set in the decades following the reign of Napoleon, provides tons of information on the time period. Reading the reactions of different characters to historical events helped me better understand the differing mentalities of the era. Marius, raised by his grandfather, adopts anti-revolutionary ideas and disapproves of the Napoleon. But when Marius finally discovers the truth of his father, he switches viewpoints. His father served under Napoleon, and had beliefs in direct opposition to Marius's grandfather's. When his father dies, Marius is gripped with guilt at having shunned him. He takes it upon himself to learn all he can about Napoleon and his time, and ultimately adopts his father's philosophy, estranging himself from his grandfather. This highlights the societal rifts created by differing political viewpoints, even between family members.
Hugo had two main points to make in this book. One, that every action has consequences, often surpassing expectation; and two, that life is not black and white - there are shades of grey. I have addressed the first of these with the example of the kindness shown to Jean Valjean by the Bishop of Digne. The second point is well-made via the character of Javert. The police inspector is driven by duty. For him, something is either right or wrong, with no middle ground. Jean Valjean has broken the law and must be punished. Motives and circumstances make no difference - a crime is a crime. Because of his inflexible viewpoint, Javert is shaken when Jean Valjean later spares his life. He would rather have been shot than saved by a criminal. His upheaval is compounded when he discovers Jean Valjean, carrying Marius, at the exit of the sewer. A criminal that saves not one, but two peoples' lives is incomprehensible to him. Javert fails to reach a conclusion that satisfies his strict philosophy. He cannot bring himself to condemn the man that has saved his life and asked nothing in return, but not to do so would go against what he sees as his duty. Caught between these two ideas, and unable to justify either, he throws himself into the Seine and drowns. Had Javert been able to see the world in shades of grey, he would have realized that Jean Valjean was a victim of circumstance - a good man, forced by events beyond his control to break the law.
Some books are difficult to understand due to a lack of supplied background information. Les Miserables is just the opposite. For the most part I really enjoyed the book, but there are several point at which Hugo goes overboard in his description, to the point where the information isn't necessary. These sequences become tedious at times, like slogging through a deep mire. My motivation to go on was the interest I had in the central story, knowing that eventually the book would return there. Examples of such overly long tangents include the Battle of Waterloo sequence, the description of Paris street life, the history of the convent where Jean Valjean and Cosette hide, and the history of the Paris sewers. At these points it seemed almost as if Hugo were attempting to make the book into a history text, rather than a novel.
On the whole, however, I was very satisfied with the book. As I have said, Hugo's writing is excellent. His detailed descriptions of everything in the story makes it come alive. Referencing specific street names in Paris gives it realism. Minute details of human interrelations are captured vividly, and one feels as if the characters are real. There were points where I felt great compassion for Jean Valjean in his nobleness despite hardship, and places where I detested Marius for his insensitivity. There were places at which I was greatly annoyed with Cosette for her naivete and submissiveness, and toward the end I even pitied Javert for his inability to resolve his internal turmoil. The invocation of such emotions in the reader are signs of a good writer. I would highly recommend this book to anyone. It will remain one of my favorites for a long time to come.
Book Review: The Grandeur of the Human Spirit
Summary: 5 Stars
Reading some of the criticisms of this masterpiece gives rise to a certain measure of despair. With so much to honour in this novel, what do these critics focus on? Its length. Its digressions. Its departure from modern writing conventions. It's like disparaging the teachings of Jesus Christ because He was preachy, given to parables and wanting a fashion sense.Les Miserables is not an easy read. Worthy literature rarely is. Hugo takes pains to paint complete pictures of time and place, sometimes going on for dozens of pages just to set a scene. This is because he wrote before the advent of cinema, a narrative medium that has trained us to think in terms of pictures. As modern readers, we are well versed in such visualization, but Hugo's readers were not. Most had never seen a battlefield; had no idea about the horrors of war. Contrast this to the modern reader who has already seen a hundred depictions of battle before the age of ten. Is it any wonder that Hugo felt the need for exhaustive descriptions of settings that we take for granted?
This is a novel with many stories. But the arc of one life ties them all together. Jean Valjean is the warp that binds otherwise disparate wefts. He is more than the heart of the novel; he is its soul. Hugo indulges in a writer's conceit, showing us a man's passage from barbarism to the attainment of grace: the soul of the story on a journey of the soul. What a marvellous self-referential device. This is but an instance of the intelligence that informs this work.
The many characters that populate this novel all contribute to Valjean's spiritual journey. From the Bishop, he learns virtue; from Fantine, pity; from Cossette, love; from the nuns, humility; from Marius, patience. Even his implacable nemesis Javert has something to offer. In matching wits with him, Valjean learns courage.
Another warning: this book is melodramatic. It was written in a more innocent age, before the advent of cynicism and disdain. It is foolish to judge Les Miserables by current standards, and the fact that it may look naive to our jaded eyes says more about the failings of our times than the failings of the author. But insofar as it is melodrama, it is good melodrama. The author's sincerity is never in doubt. He puts melodrama to noble purpose and doesn't yield to false sentiment.
Consider the following passage from the book. Fantine has died and her child, Cossette, has been forced into slavery as a drudge. On a dark night, in the dead of winter, this little girl is tasked to haul water from a well deep in the woods:
"She struggled with [the bucket] for a dozen paces, but it was too full and too heavy and she was forced to put it down again. After resting for another moment she resumed the struggle and this time got a little further before she again had to stop. Then she went on. She walked bent forward like an old woman, with the weight of the bucket dragging on her thin arms and the metal handle biting into her small chilled hands, pausing frequently to rest; and each time she put the bucket down a little of the water slopped down on to her bare legs. And this was happening to a child of eight in the woods at night, in winter, far from any human gaze. Only God was there to see, and perhaps her mother, alas, for there are things that rouse the dead in their graves."
"Her progress was very slow. Although she shortened her periods of rest and forced herself to go as far as possible after every pause she reckoned that it would take her over an hour to get back in this fashion to Montfermeil, and that Mme Thernardier would beat her when she arrived; and this was a further distress to be added to the terror of solitude and the night. She was nearly at the end of her strength, and still she had not got out of the wood. Coming to an old chestnut tree with which she was well acquainted, she made a last pause, longer than the previous ones, so that she might be properly rested, then bravely started again; but such was her despair that she could not prevent herself from crying aloud - 'Oh, God help me! Please, dear God!'
The passage is clearly manipulative in the way all melodrama is, yet I defy anyone with a working heart to read this and remain unmoved. But this passage does not exist simply to milk our tears. Hugo is condemning the failings of his society with passion and with shame. It is unconscionable that a child of eight should be sentenced to a life of indentured servitude because bourgeois morality first destroys the mother and then throws away the child. Such melodrama is purchased with the dearest currency.
This book is so all encompassing, so finely textured, that we sometimes lose sight of its magnificence. The only phrase that does it justice is "grandeur of spirit". This book, more than any other work of literature, epitomizes the grandeur of the human spirit. When Valjean dies, it is more than the death of a good and gentle man. Les Miserables occupies a place among the most vaunted tragedies because Valjean has penetrated to our innermost being. He represents all that is numinous about the human spirit, and his passing is the passing of greatness.
Book Review: ..."And So, Fantine Was Watched...."
Summary: 5 Stars
The title of this review reflects one of the most critical moments in the life of the young French peasant woman, Fantine, the ill-fated female counterpart of Jean Vajean, the protagonist of Victor Hugo's 1862 epic tale about a convict's redemption.
Valjean stole a loaf of bread in a desperate attempt to feed his sister and her children. He was arrested, and incarcerated, and due to repeated attempts to escape, ultimately serves 19 years on a chain gang. Upon his release from prison, he has difficulty readjusting to society, and in finding lodging because the yellow pass he must carry to inform others of his status as an ex-convict results in doors slamming in his face.
The hardened policeman, Inspector Javert remains on his tail. But Valjean's slow path to redemption begins due to the charitable acts of the Bishop of Digne, who takes him in and covers for him when he is confronted with the candlesticks he stole from the Bishop.
Turning over a new leaf, Valjean becomes the mayor of Montfermeil, and the head of a factory.The young factory worker, Fantine, has tried to be discreet about her status as an unwed mother. With her fair hair, and white teeth, she is envied by the other poor female factory workers who apparently feel that she hasn't suffered enough for their satisfaction. So they begin to watch her, and nose into her business, and eventually find a reason for her to be dismissed. As she was paying for her own lodging, and for her daughter, Cossette, to be sheltered by the inkeeper, Thenardier and his wife, life for Fantine now becomes abysmal, and she gradually sacrifices her beauty, locket, incisors, and eventually whatever self-respect she may have had left to pay her debts.This reflects the tragic scenario of how women can do more to tear each other down than some men can, and from our modern standpoint, we appreciate that women had fewer options at the time, and Fantine had to operate in a world that was much less forgiving.
Valjean rescues her after her arrest by Javert when a prospective customer provokes the young prostitute her and she attacks him in return. Due to illness, he lodges Fantine home where she is cared for by Sister Semplice. As Valjean promises Fantine that he will find and raise her child, Cossette, an incident results in the arrest of a man resembling Valjean, and Valjean knows he cannot let an innocent man be incarcerated in his stead.Another confrontation between Valjean amd Javert inside Valjean's house, results in Javert berating the young woman unsympathetically even as she is on her deathbed.The last words she hears on earth are words that will destroy whatever hope she had left.
Valjean knows that the mother's tragedy has to become her daughter's triumph. After escaping from prison again, he finds the horribly abused little skivvy fetching water in the dark woods, and pays her villainous guardians (who indulge their own daughters, Eponine and Anselma)to take her away, presenting her with a beautiful doll, and her first decent clothes in many years--a mourning dress for her mother.
Filled with intricate details of period and place,Hugo leads us on a journey around France that ends in the Paris of the 1830s where the convent-educated Cossette( whose given name means "Will be victorious") grows into a beauty, and attracts the attention of the young student Marius. But a student insurrection lies on the horizon and it will have a tremendous impact on the lives of many.
We are introduced to the student leader, Enjorlas, the young urchin, Gavroche, whose tragic story counterbalances Cossette's, we see what befalls Thernardier's grown daughters, and how one of them grows up to have some redeeming virtues,we see Javert come to terms with his own hardened and pitiless attitude, and we review an entire array of characters that will provoke readers and stir imaginations for many generations to come.
Hugo insists in the introduction for this masterpiece that,..."So long as ignorance and misery remain on this earth, books like this will never be useless."
Simply stated, I agree.