Book review: Les Miserables
A while back, I was talking to one of my coworkers about books and he mentioned something he’d been doing recently - reading the great classics. He’d become put out with the crappy quality of current writing and decided to go back and read all those old books people said were masterpieces. He’d read a few in high school and college, but there were lots of others highly esteemed as great literature. If modern stuff seemed like pap, he would go back to the hearty fare of yesteryear.
That sounded cool to me, but at the time I was soldiering through Hitch-22. But in my quest for other audiobooks to download from the public library, I found that the titles and authors I was looking for often weren’t present. Plus, I’m a little out of date as to what’s good. Yet it occurred to me one day that something the public library would have a lot of would be those exact classics my coworker had talked about and if I couldn’t find the hot new stuff, then I might as well go back to the old.
I asked my coworker for his recommendations, then I downloaded and installed them on my iPod. He was a great fan of Alexander Dumas, but also liked Victor Hugo’s work. Les Miserables was the first I listened to because it was only 11 hours on audiobook. The Count of Monte Cristo (which is what I’ve started listening to this morning) is 17 hours and the Three Musketeers is 21. The Game of Thrones is 30, though and I’d prefer to knock off the shorter stuff than tackle longer.*
So I read (listened to) Les Miserables. For those who don’t know, it’s a drama set in France of the 1800s. It follows the life of several characters, principally Jean Valjean and his adopted daughter, Cossette. The society is one that punishes transgressions with a consistent and excessive harshness. A small thing like stealing a loaf of bread sees Jean Valjean put in the galleys for robbery, branded (metaphorically) as a convict with every door shut against him. We see this at the beginning, as he’s trying to get a room at an inn or even in someone’s shed, and all turn him out. He eventually gets a bit mad and robs a boy of a shiny coin the boy accidentally drops, and then at some point he steals a bishop’s candlesticks and the bishop dies, but I couldn’t figure out if he actually murdered the bishop (as he was later accused) or if something else happened. It didn’t seem like he murdered him, but one thing that was consistent throughout was Jean Valjean’s willingness to assume responsibility for any wrong imputed to him.
The story was of Jean Valjean’s attempt to redeem himself. He did so through cleverness, industry, self-sacrifice, generosity, thoughtfulness, etc. There were many examples in the book, including him ruining his life and exposing his true identity rather than let a similar-looking man be mistaken for him and tried in his place (for the crime of stealing a branch with apples on it, which turned out he’d merely picked up a fallen branch that had washed into the ditch at the side of the road during a storm). His most long-term example was the adoption of Cossette, the child of one of his employees. The employee died of an unspecified illness and Jean Valjean took her child as his own, taking her away to Paris after evading the authorities who were after him following the exposure of his true identity. Rescuing her also gave him reason not to submit to the authorities, which was convenient for the storyline.
Cossette grew up and a young man, Marius, fell in love with her. Marius’ story was detailed and interesting, his motivations well-explored just as Jean Valjean’s were (as were those of Marius’ father and grandfather, those of Javier the officer of the law, those of Tenadiere the villain, etc.) In fact, the motivations of any male character who got more than a passing mention were fascinating, appealing and engaging even when the character was a bad guy. The female characters were window dressing, even when they were central and recurring, like Cossette’s mother Fontaine, Marius’ spinster aunt, or Cossette herself. Cossette existed solely for Jean Valjean to sacrifice himself for and for Marius to desire and then possess. She might as well have been a lovely statue or a fine horse for all the character she had.
She did have virtue in abundance as the author clearly didn’t want all these male characters striving for something flawed. She was all good things - pretty, obedient, … um, actually, I’m not sure what else she was other than those two, because she never did much of anything that showed who she was. She performed no labor that we saw (though she knew how to read and write), had no interests or ambitions, never argued with anyone, never defied her father or her husband (not even when they were at odds with one another or when she had to give up one for the other - a choice which was not hers to make, as society delineated very clearly when a woman belonged to her father and when she belonged to her husband), and so on.
She hardly mattered in the story, except as a McGuffin. If you could deal with that, then the story of the men was riveting and entertaining. It was emotional and tense, dramatic without being cliché, always interesting. There was no sex and little gore, no cursing or weird deviancies the reader must accept to follow the story (like the existence of magic or God, for example). It wasn’t the sort of story that taught you anything new, although I confess to being curious about 1800 French penal code. Was it really that strict? It was just ridiculous! But I’ve heard similar ‘zero tolerance’ policies used to be in effect in China, so maybe so.
One thing I had trouble following was the place names in French - mere collections of sounds are difficult for me to mentally process as meaningful. ‘Parkway Avenue’ means something. ‘Parchneaux La Twah Vienaveise’ does not, especially when I’m asked to differentiate it from ‘Parchneaux La Twah Ne Fi Vienavoux’. They’re virtually indistinguishable unless I hear them right next to each other, or unless I read them. Heard, they get filed in the same mental slot of foreign gibberish. Reading them, I can easily keep them apart. But for an audiobook, I ended up simply ignoring where they were and paying attention to what the characters were doing and saying.
As for Hugo’s style, I loved it. His descriptions of characters was something to learn from. Same for the details he chose to illustrate them with, from clothing to expression to action and mannerism. He had turns of phrase that I liked - I’ve seen better wordsmiths, but he got his money’s worth out of his words. I loved the cadence and flow of his sentences, the way he used phrases to elaborate and dramatize his meaning. The narrator/voice actor/reader deserves special mention for adopting unique voices for each character.
All told - good book, I heartily recommend it!
* This preference for short stuff first, by the way, is something I took to heart a couple years ago about fanfic. I would do the same when deciding if I wanted to read an author’s works. I’d pick something very short they’d written and if they had nothing short, then it’s possible I wouldn’t read them at all. So in my own work, I started writing vignettes and shorter stories so a new reader would have something to take on a test drive before they dove into anything longer of mine.
That sounded cool to me, but at the time I was soldiering through Hitch-22. But in my quest for other audiobooks to download from the public library, I found that the titles and authors I was looking for often weren’t present. Plus, I’m a little out of date as to what’s good. Yet it occurred to me one day that something the public library would have a lot of would be those exact classics my coworker had talked about and if I couldn’t find the hot new stuff, then I might as well go back to the old.
I asked my coworker for his recommendations, then I downloaded and installed them on my iPod. He was a great fan of Alexander Dumas, but also liked Victor Hugo’s work. Les Miserables was the first I listened to because it was only 11 hours on audiobook. The Count of Monte Cristo (which is what I’ve started listening to this morning) is 17 hours and the Three Musketeers is 21. The Game of Thrones is 30, though and I’d prefer to knock off the shorter stuff than tackle longer.*
So I read (listened to) Les Miserables. For those who don’t know, it’s a drama set in France of the 1800s. It follows the life of several characters, principally Jean Valjean and his adopted daughter, Cossette. The society is one that punishes transgressions with a consistent and excessive harshness. A small thing like stealing a loaf of bread sees Jean Valjean put in the galleys for robbery, branded (metaphorically) as a convict with every door shut against him. We see this at the beginning, as he’s trying to get a room at an inn or even in someone’s shed, and all turn him out. He eventually gets a bit mad and robs a boy of a shiny coin the boy accidentally drops, and then at some point he steals a bishop’s candlesticks and the bishop dies, but I couldn’t figure out if he actually murdered the bishop (as he was later accused) or if something else happened. It didn’t seem like he murdered him, but one thing that was consistent throughout was Jean Valjean’s willingness to assume responsibility for any wrong imputed to him.
The story was of Jean Valjean’s attempt to redeem himself. He did so through cleverness, industry, self-sacrifice, generosity, thoughtfulness, etc. There were many examples in the book, including him ruining his life and exposing his true identity rather than let a similar-looking man be mistaken for him and tried in his place (for the crime of stealing a branch with apples on it, which turned out he’d merely picked up a fallen branch that had washed into the ditch at the side of the road during a storm). His most long-term example was the adoption of Cossette, the child of one of his employees. The employee died of an unspecified illness and Jean Valjean took her child as his own, taking her away to Paris after evading the authorities who were after him following the exposure of his true identity. Rescuing her also gave him reason not to submit to the authorities, which was convenient for the storyline.
Cossette grew up and a young man, Marius, fell in love with her. Marius’ story was detailed and interesting, his motivations well-explored just as Jean Valjean’s were (as were those of Marius’ father and grandfather, those of Javier the officer of the law, those of Tenadiere the villain, etc.) In fact, the motivations of any male character who got more than a passing mention were fascinating, appealing and engaging even when the character was a bad guy. The female characters were window dressing, even when they were central and recurring, like Cossette’s mother Fontaine, Marius’ spinster aunt, or Cossette herself. Cossette existed solely for Jean Valjean to sacrifice himself for and for Marius to desire and then possess. She might as well have been a lovely statue or a fine horse for all the character she had.
She did have virtue in abundance as the author clearly didn’t want all these male characters striving for something flawed. She was all good things - pretty, obedient, … um, actually, I’m not sure what else she was other than those two, because she never did much of anything that showed who she was. She performed no labor that we saw (though she knew how to read and write), had no interests or ambitions, never argued with anyone, never defied her father or her husband (not even when they were at odds with one another or when she had to give up one for the other - a choice which was not hers to make, as society delineated very clearly when a woman belonged to her father and when she belonged to her husband), and so on.
She hardly mattered in the story, except as a McGuffin. If you could deal with that, then the story of the men was riveting and entertaining. It was emotional and tense, dramatic without being cliché, always interesting. There was no sex and little gore, no cursing or weird deviancies the reader must accept to follow the story (like the existence of magic or God, for example). It wasn’t the sort of story that taught you anything new, although I confess to being curious about 1800 French penal code. Was it really that strict? It was just ridiculous! But I’ve heard similar ‘zero tolerance’ policies used to be in effect in China, so maybe so.
One thing I had trouble following was the place names in French - mere collections of sounds are difficult for me to mentally process as meaningful. ‘Parkway Avenue’ means something. ‘Parchneaux La Twah Vienaveise’ does not, especially when I’m asked to differentiate it from ‘Parchneaux La Twah Ne Fi Vienavoux’. They’re virtually indistinguishable unless I hear them right next to each other, or unless I read them. Heard, they get filed in the same mental slot of foreign gibberish. Reading them, I can easily keep them apart. But for an audiobook, I ended up simply ignoring where they were and paying attention to what the characters were doing and saying.
As for Hugo’s style, I loved it. His descriptions of characters was something to learn from. Same for the details he chose to illustrate them with, from clothing to expression to action and mannerism. He had turns of phrase that I liked - I’ve seen better wordsmiths, but he got his money’s worth out of his words. I loved the cadence and flow of his sentences, the way he used phrases to elaborate and dramatize his meaning. The narrator/voice actor/reader deserves special mention for adopting unique voices for each character.
All told - good book, I heartily recommend it!
* This preference for short stuff first, by the way, is something I took to heart a couple years ago about fanfic. I would do the same when deciding if I wanted to read an author’s works. I’d pick something very short they’d written and if they had nothing short, then it’s possible I wouldn’t read them at all. So in my own work, I started writing vignettes and shorter stories so a new reader would have something to take on a test drive before they dove into anything longer of mine.