Wednesday 1 January 2014

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo


Les Miserables was the book selected for me during the Classics Club spin, and one that I was genuinely excited to get to.  I had seen the film and the stage show and I love big chunky epics to sink my teeth into, so I picked up this story of a failed Parisian revolution in 1832 with lots of optimism and anticipation.  But unfortunately I was disappointed.  And this was very unexpected because I like really chunky books (Anna Karenina and A Suitable Boy are among my favourites) and I like books about social issues and the lives of the poor.  I tried so hard to like Les Miserables but in the end I had to admit to myself that it will never be a favourite.

The main problem with the book wasn't it's length, but the fact that it felt so long to read.  Every time the main narrative threads starting building up and the pace started increasing, Hugo would interrupt them with some completely unrelated diversionary 50+ pages about the Battle of Waterloo, the history of a convent, or the architectural design of Parisian sewers.  This really interrupted the narrative flow and I found it completely jarring; every time I lost myself in the book, I was abruptly jerked out of the story.

And then there is the detail.  Now I like a good bit of detail and I don't even mind when it slows the pace, but Hugo is the master of unnecessary detail and his writing style is repetitive.  Why write it in a sentence when you could spend an entire chapter repeating the same few things?  I understand that Les Miserables is a panoramic view of society at the time, and a lot of the detail was relevant, but too much time was spent lingering on each piece of information, and it began to feel a little self-indulgent.  In the very first chapter, Hugo writes "There is something we might mention that has no bearing whatsoever on the tale we have to tell - not even on the background." Yet he mentions it anyway, in great detail, for many pages, and the whole book is like this.

To get all my negative points out of the way first, I also found the character of Cosette to be very annoying.  She falls in love with Marius at first sight and completely loses sight of who she is as a person.  Her whole being becomes focused on being in love, to the extent that she has no other identity.  There's one scene where she is explaining to Marius that Cosette isn't her real name, and that she prefers her birth name Euphrasie.  Marius indicates a slight preference for Cosette so she instantly changes her mind.  She allows herself to be pulled away from Valjean, a man who has cared for her for most of her life, and basically has no opinion that Marius has not expressed first.  Hardly a great example of a strong female character.

Now I'm done with the negatives, I can say that of course, there were many things that I did like about Les Miserables. Both Epoinine and Enjolras were fascinating characters, full of depth and very interesting to read about.  I particularly liked Epoinine's mix of toughness from living on the street mixed with a surprising vulnerability and how she just leapt off the page as a character full of life.  Hugo's themes of progress and education for all people in society are of course honourable, and the battle scenes at the blockade were very well written.  In fact, most of the book was well written and I can't fault Julie Rose's translation.

But for me, I just couldn't get over the excessive detail and how the pace of the novel was constantly interrupted with diversions.  By the time I got to just over half-way through the book, reading it had started to feel like a chore that I was looking forward to completing.  I am glad that I read it, but I can't see myself ever picking it up again.


The Classics Club: Book 20/72

Source: Personal copy
First Published: 1862
Edition Read: Modern Library, 2009 
Score: 3 out of 5

22 comments:

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  2. It's disappointing to put so much time into a lengthy book and come out of it feeling like it wasn't worth it. Well, thanks for reading it so I don't have to :)

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    1. I am glad I read it, as it taught me more about what I can and can't tolerate in books, but it was a lengthy lesson!

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  3. I know exactly what you mean about his rambling ways. Holy cats, I learned more about Parisian sewers than I ever wanted to know ;) I admit to skipping the 50 pages about Waterloo...that increased my enjoyment of this book a LOT.

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    1. I actually liked the Waterloo section much more than the sewers. But the absolute worst was Marius' family history - they were all dull!

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  4. I've never read anything by Hugo -- I have this one and also The Hunchback, which I bought at the gift shop at Notre Dame. Cosette sounds like a real pain -- I get so tired of wimpy spineless heroines. She sounds like every one of Dickens' ingenues.

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    1. Is Hunchback a lot shorter? How cool that you actually bought it at Notre Dame, it's worth reading for that alone! And yes, Cosette could have been written by Dickens. It's a shame as some of his other female characters were much better.

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  5. Sorry to hear you were disappointed, especially as it's such a long book! I read it a few years ago and enjoyed it overall, but I can definitely understand why you had problems with it. I skipped the whole Waterloo section and the convent and sewer parts too, as they seemed to have so little relevance to the rest of the book. And I agree with you about Marius and Cosette. Eponine was a much more interesting character!

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    1. Hmm, I think I might be in the minority for not minding the Waterloo part - much better than the sewers and the convent! If I were Marius, I would definitely have picked Epoinine over flaky Cosette!

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  6. I'm sorry Les Mis didn't work for you. Somehow, it is not a book (or film or stage production) that I ever felt like reading. You were very brave to read it!

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    1. I definitely needed the prompt of the classics club spin to make me start it though!

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  7. I'm sorry you didn't enjoy your spin pick. How disappointing! I read this one some 25 years ago when I was a teenager. I remember liking it well enough but definitely feeling it was a bit tedious and drawn-out. Hopefully your next spin book will be better for you!

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    1. My first spin book was Rebecca, which was amazing, so the spin has been kind to me before. I think I would have liked Les Miserables more if I had read an abridged version.

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  8. I think the fact itself that you finished this brick as a Spin book is most impressive.

    Even though I definitely intend to read Les Miserables as well at some point, I already know in my heart that it will not be a contender to Russian classics. I have much higher hopes for War and Peace.

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    1. I think that was part of the problem, I love my Russian epics and am loyal to them! I have War and Peace to read as well, really looking forward to it as I loved Anna Karenina.

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  9. First off, congratulations for finishing in such a short time! It took me a year to read Les Mis, even though I loved it.

    I completely understand all your criticism and it shows again that paying authors by word is a stupid idea. However, what you hated is exactly what I liked about the book: Hugo throws in so many completely unrelated essays and although they do pull you out of the story they give you a fascinating insight into his society and beliefs, particularly concerning politics, in which Victor Hugo played a major role in real life.

    And I know exactly what you mean by saying his writing is repetitive, but I think that might be the fault of the translation (not of Julie Rose, just of the English language in general). In French there are hundreds of different words whose meaning is similar, but which all express different moods or connotations. It's an oddity of the French language that creates a very interesting flow and Victor Hugo uses it quite a lot, but it just can't be expressed in English.

    And I fully agree about Éponine - though my favourite character is Grantaire :)

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    1. I have the same problem with Dickens too - he tends to drag his stories out as he serialised them.

      I'm glad you were able to appreciate the essays more than I did! I think I might have liked them more if they were all collected together, I don't know? I just couldn't get over how they disrupted the flow.

      Rose's translation was excellent - I read part of another translation on my kindle and it was just so stuffy. Rose's version felt much more alive so I'm glad I picked that one in the end. Translation in general is just tricky I guess, no two languages match up.

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  10. Eeeek! I'm going to try this one in 2014, but I have a low threshold for unnecessary detail, so we'll see.

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  11. I've heard similar things - the crazy amount of mundane details. Fellow bloggers have encouraged me to just kind of skim those parts when I get to them... hopefully this'll be something that happens this year.

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  12. Congratulations on finishing this massive book! Sorry that it was like drudgery most of the time though. I haven't read Les Mis but I read Hunchback of Notre Dame and it too suffered from hefty irrelevant tangents, but not quite as bad as Les Mis, I don't think. I was just talking to a friend about Hugo, and he mentioned the Waterloo and sewers tangents and admitted that he just skimmed through those parts until they were over.

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  13. I think the quotation about details having no bearing on the story along with your commentary about it going on for pages all throughout is exactly what I am afraid of when it comes to this book -- and confirms my suspicion that this particular classic is not going to be for me.

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