Les Miserables - The Book

Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Having seen two film versions, the stage musical and the film based on the musical, I didn't exactly know what to expect from the book. But in this instance, perhaps more than many others, comparisons are pointless. The stage production took on a life of its own long ago and is an incomparable work of art that stands alone. It can be said to be based on another work of art--the book--but comparing the two is an exercise in futility.

The 1400+page book is unlike any other nineteenth century opus one is likely to encounter. It combines several normally disparate elements--the stemwinding plot of Dickens, the narrative scope of Tolstoy, the moral/ethical tone of Dostoevsky, the melodrama of Dumas and the politics of Carlyle, with bonus material in theology, rhetorical and cultural criticism. In other words, it's Victor Hugo, who completed the novel while in exile on Guernsey Island (yes, of the cows).

If you are looking for a rip-snorting adventure that teeters precariously along the protagonist-antagonist axis of Valjean and Javert, much like film and stage have done, then save yourself the time and don't crack this massive volume. Or find a cheap cheat of an abridged version with which to be entertained. If you are willing to brace yourself for a long, heavy trudge through--and under--the streets of Paris and 19th century France, rich with the aroma of layer upon layer of historical, political and social context, if you are willing to take on a social burden presented like the cross of Christ, if you can stomach sermons, lectures and illuminations about everything from the sublime to the mundane during lengthy pauses from the "story," then you are ready to absorb "Les Miserables." I say "absorb" because this is not a book you can read. It's a book that happens to you.

The one forgivable vice of the work is its penchant for romantic melodrama--that sickly sweet staple of so much 19th century prose--forgivable because it's a vice to which so many of Hugo's peers were also inclined. Work your way around it gingerly and you'll be fine.

I had heard of the famous account of the Battle of Waterloo by Hugo, but didn't realize it was in this book (right now you're thinking "what does the Battle of Waterloo have to do with anything?" Turns out, not much, but that's just one of the cereal box prizes contained in this novel). For Napoleonic era aficionados like me, it was a rare treat to encounter it finally. This remarkable addition, along with so many other fascinating asides in this novel, serves to break all the rules of good story telling. Tolstoy would give us Borodino in "War and Peace" but he had a couple of central characters present during the action. Not so, Hugo. The battle does connect to the story, but almost at the level of the so-called Butterfly Effect. One gets a lot of this sort of contingency development in this book, which makes it either a bad narrative or ahead of its time, pre-figuring post-modern tales influenced by the era of Quantum science.

Be that as it may, for the disciplined mind, the book will do two things: it will enrich one's life and it will shine a light on a segment of life and humanity that even today we would rather ignore.




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