Les Miserables (Penguin Classics) by Victor Hugo (1982-04-29) Unknown Binding – April 29, 1982

I have been dancing around the idea of reading "Les Miserables" off and on for twenty years, ever since I came across an abridged version at a local library and made it only so far. It's one of those "classics you have read before you die" or something like that, a book that you could check off your bucket list if you had the time and energy to get through it. And so, last month, I finally ordered the Penguin Classics edition. I think, oddly enough, the Notre Dame fire put me in mind of Hugo, but not the "Hunchback of Notre Dame." I wanted to go big or go home.First, the good news: by and large, "Les Miserables" deserves its status as a classic, if not always a great novel. It's hard to think of a better book about the poor and forgotten in life, and Hugo's writing when describing the ways in which life conspires against the less fortunate is hard to beat. Plus, Jean Valjean is one of the best characters in literature, and way more complex than I would've thought from the way in which I remember hearing about him in lit classes or just in pop culture in general. Cosette I can take or leave after she becomes enamored of Marius (their romance is like that couple you know on social media, the ones for whom no one else exists but each other. You know what I'm talking about). Javert is, often, barely there, but he comes in for effective cameos throughout the novel. Thenardier is slightly less believable as someone who always seems to crop up like he does, but hey, this is a nineteenth-century novel set in a city of more than a million people, where certain characters always seem to be bumping into one another. It's called "melodrama" and no one did it better than the writers of the nineteenth century (I hesitate to say "Victorian" because Hugo was obviously French and not writing in the slightly repressed atmosphere of Dickens, Trollope, and so on).Now, the bad news: be it the fault of the translator or of Hugo himself, there's some awful writing in patches of this book that really taxes the reader's interest and will power. I finally decided, after the section dealing with the history of sewers(!), to just skim over the parts where characters are long-winded (and, believe me, they are. Did I not mention that this is a melodrama?) or where Hugo seems determined to tell you everything he possibly can about a subject. The editor of this edition said, in his introduction, that some parts of the book were cut down or excised for the two appendices (neither of which I read), and I can understand and appreciate that. But I also recognize why some editions I've seen aren't nearly the doorstop length of this or similar editions; Hugo often takes several sections to say what could be rendered in a medium-length paragraph or two. When approaching a book that's legendary in its status, you have to be willing to be honest about how the book works or doesn't, and there's a lot here that wouldn't work in a modern novel and indeed doesn't work in this one.So why the four stars, you may ask? Because even with the gripes, "Les Miserables" is a good read overall. I think Hugo's descriptions of Paris, while at times a little too digressive, are touching when you consider his exile status. At the time he wrote the book, he was living in the Channel Islands (controlled by England but just off the coast of France) because he fell into disfavor with the current despot, Napoleon III. He was yearning to return (and would after Napoleon's fall in 1870), but he was stuck remembering the city of his youth, and that can be affecting at times.Sometimes, as Mark Twain said, a classic is a book that everyone agrees on but nobody reads. Well, I've read "Les Miserables," and I think it's not completely a masterpiece, at least not in this translation. But it's a worthy task to undertake if you're an adventurous reader with time on your hands (and strong wrists to carry the paperback, which is substantial even if it's not hardcover). It's got some really bad writing in places, some parts that you may wish to skim or skip completely, and I don't blame you. But the overall feeling I got upon finishing it is that it's worth a try, and I hope that you will too.

The book arrived early and is in very good condition. I’m really enjoying reading it. Thanks.