Les Misérables

I have never struggled my way through a book as much as I did with this. Read the English translation (I'm not English) and I found the language and writing style hard at times but it was so worth it! It's so gritty and dark about struggles and poverty, yet it so beautiful. It's is truly a masterpiece and I'm so happy I've read it. But I'm also happy I'd seen the musical recently and not only did it spark a need to reread it but a better understanding of the story. The book obviously contains much more but it certainly helped!

This...this is a difficult book to review. I can't give it any stars because at different points in the book, I either really liked it or struggled to keep myself going with it.

Les Miserables is not a novel. Or, rather, it's not just a novel. It's a philosophy lesson, a history lesson, and a detail-oriented background in one. He goes off on tangents and sometimes, it was laborious to get through. (Something like 60 pages of background on Waterloo? WTF). I considered giving up three times. I forced myself to keep going.

I felt like there was a good story buried in there, beneath all of the crap, but it was difficult to get through. I read this book for the story and I feel like I would have been better served reading the abridged version or watching the PBS mini-series or the recent movie. This was more than just the story of Cosette, Jean Valjean, Javert, etc. This was a recounting of France in that era, of the prevailing philosophies and extensive background information, and it was the piece de la resistance of Hugo's life.

Les Miserables is a masterpiece...but.

I feel toward it the way I felt toward Wuthering Heights, the movie, when I saw it in class. "This is masterfully done...but it's not for me." You can appreciate something, call it art, and acknowledge that it is not intended for you or that while there are parts that you enjoy, the piece itself is not to your liking. And that is how I feel about Les Miserables.

I cried at the end of the book, even though it felt like Hugo basically took a machete to most of my favorite characters just to cut them down. So that was moving.

People told me not to give up on the book and that I would be glad I didn't. Am I glad I didn't? I don't know, to be perfectly honest. It fills in blanks for characterization for the PBS mini-series, of what I've seen so far. Would I have regretted not finishing it? Perhaps. Perhaps not. The only reason I ultimately stuck with it was that I had read so much of it already that I felt to abandon it would be to admit defeat.

Let me put it to you this way. I enjoyed the actual story. But a lot of it felt an awful lot like reading for school, where you have to force your way through. And that, to me, is not enjoyable.

Yes, the book has a lot of interesting philosophy, a lot of which is applicable today considering class divides and our current social problems. Looking at it from an academic point of view, I can see why teachers might have assigned this as required reading. It also had a lot of vocab that I've never seen before and I don't mean French excerpts. It's not often that I encounter that many words I've never read before.

Les Mis is not pleasure reading, not for me. As I said, there were pleasurable parts in it, but overall, this is not why I read fiction.

Odd as it is, I think another comparison might be drawn to a contemporary novel--The Hate U Give. That book is important to read given the political climate and I thought it was well done. I made my mother read it. Just because a book is important to read, however, does not necessarily make it an enjoyable book. And that is the case here, as well as with THUG.

I read this book in preparation for a YA sci fi book based off Les Mis. All I can say is: I sure as hell hope that book doesn't suck, because I'd be a little pissed off if I spent over twenty hours reading Les Mis for nothing.

This abridged edition was the one I first read in high school, completely unfamiliar with the musical or plot. For years I considered it my favorite book due to the impact it had on me: such powerful messages of grace, forgiveness, and redemption, especially contrasted against the strict black-and-white legalism that has always come more naturally to me.

I've since read

an unabridged version, which admittedly I didn't care for as much.