This week I’m doing a multipart review of the excellent but very long Les Miserables by Victor Hugo.  Read about Volumes I and II here.  Volume III focuses (though not immediately) on Marius, leaving Jean Valjean and Cosette out of the story for quite a while.  This is where I think it helped the most that I knew the musical, or I would have been feeling very adrift!

Marius was raised in wealth, but fell out with his grandfather over his estranged father’s politics.  Turning his back on his grandfather and his money, Marius lives in Paris in relative poverty, scraping along on some minimal scholarly work–but contented with that.  And then one day at the Luxembourg Gardens he sees a beautiful young woman out with her father and is hopelessly smitten.  They carry on a lengthy courtship of glances, until one day she ceases to come and Marius is plunged into the depths of despair.

I’m not entirely sure how I feel about Marius.  He’s such a nice young man.  I can’t dislike him–he’s so nice–but there’s not a whole lot I like about him either.  I both accept and respect his dedication to his principles (a dedication I don’t quite believe in the musical), but at the same time, he follows that dedication with such utter lack of common sense that I shake my head a bit too.  His most praiseworthy attribute in the musical is his revolutionary fervor, which just doesn’t exist in the book.  On the other hand, his most blameworthy attribute, his blindness regarding Eponine, doesn’t really exist in the book either.  But that brings me to two other plot threads…

Marius’ crowd of revolutionary friends do turn up in this book and I enjoyed getting more depth on them.  At the same time, I was surprised by how shallow Marius’ connection to them was.  He knows them, but he’s really not one of them.  It gets more complicated with the barricade, but that’s Part IV.  I was happy to see Enjolras, though, the leader of the group and one of my favorites from the musical.

Marius’ path also intersects with the Thenardiers, who have come to Paris and fallen on even worse times.  Take away the humor from the Thenardiers, and you have instead examples of just how low people can sink, both in poverty and in moral character.

Two members of the Thenardier family particularly fascinate me.  First, Eponine, the older daughter.  I actually found her a more interesting character in the musical.  There’s a spark of something in her, this sense that she could be so much more than her life has so far let her be.  Oddly enough, I get less of that feeling from the book.  I think it’s there, but she’s far more disreputable too.  There also seems to be less of a relationship between her and Marius than the musical suggested, to the point that I can’t blame him for not returning her unrequited crush.  It redeems him a bit, though I felt less for her.

I was just a little disappointed regarding Eponine, but I was thrilled with Gavroche.  I can see why the musical never got into the fact that he’s the Thenardiers’ son–he has only the most tenuous of relationships.  He emerges in the book just as I had hoped, a plucky, cheeky street urchin, keeping his head up and his confidence intact no matter what life hands him.  I love Gavroche’s spirit, and I also love that even in his own poverty, he’s still generous.  He gives to others even if it means he won’t eat that night himself, and he seems to do it instinctively.  Love, love Gavroche!

You may be wondering at this point what ever became of Valjean, and you’d be justified in that wondering!  I don’t think he’s mentioned by name in this entire Volume…although it doesn’t take much insight to match up Valjean and Cosette with another set of characters who do appear here…

I’m definitely not invested in Marius the way I was in Valjean, but that didn’t really interfere with my enjoyment of this section.  The story was engaging even if I had mixed feelings about the main character.

Come back tomorrow for a review of the last section…one day more ’til the barricades arise. 🙂

I have a fear of long books, a fear I have been attempting to confront this year by reading some of the big thick books I’ve put off (usually because there are so many other books to read!)  I’m trying to get in one a month, and in February I tackled what’s probably the thickest of them all, Les Miserables by Victor Hugo.  My copy had 920 pages of very small font, and with that much text to get through, it’s a good thing I enjoyed the story so much!

I’ve seen the musical, both as a play and the recent movie, and I think that was beneficial reading the original.  The musical felt (to me) like it was predominantly accurate to the book–not in every particular, but in most ways.  Knowing the soundtrack so well, I frequently had relevant lines running about in my mind as I read the corresponding scene.  That was fun, but more importantly, knowing the musical meant I had a pretty good idea where Hugo was going–which is not always obvious!

Before I go further, I should confess something.  I didn’t actually read all of the book.  I’m guesstimating I read a solid 750 pages.  You see, Hugo has this habit of going off into history or social commentary for twenty pages at a stretch.  And…I started skipping those chapters.  In a way, it’s actually a compliment to the rest of the book–I was far too eager to get back to Jean Valjean and the rest, and couldn’t stomach the amount of reading time it would take to wade through the other bits.  I never found that I was having any trouble following subsequent chapters after skipping sections, so it seemed to work out.

The book is subdivided into five volumes, but I think really reads like three clear sections.  Volume I and II focus on Jean Valjean and, more briefly, Fantine.  Volume III is Marius’ story.  Volume IV and V are about the revolution, in the middle of which all the earlier plot threads intersect.  I could give you a very, very long review…but as you likely surmised from the title, I’m going to break this into three parts instead.  So today, we’ll start with the first two volumes.

Set in France in the early 1800s, Volume I begins the story of Jean Valjean, an ex-convict on parole who finds himself at a crossroads when he meets a particularly sainted bishop (Hugo drives the point home rather).  Valjean struggles with whether or not to steal from the bishop…and I won’t give the details away, but he ends up resolving to shed his former identity and go forward to lead an honest life.

Jump ahead several years and we meet Fantine, a woman left alone with a child born out of wedlock.  She falls on worse and worse times, eventually turning to prostitution to provide for her daughter, Cosette, who has been left in the care of two innkeepers, the Thenardiers.

The first observation I have to make is that Hugo likes backstory.  The first 35 pages are the backstory for the sainted bishop; I was still feeling dedicated at that point and read them.  They’re not bad, but the story picked up a lot for me at the beginning of Book Second, when Valjean arrives in the story.  I loved learning more about Valjean’s backstory, and about Fantine’s as well, when we come to her.  I loved getting the details that the musical only hints at, and I loved the depth of the character exploration.

Valjean is a wonderful character.  It was fascinating to find out his history, and also how he developed (or perhaps I should say, regressed) during his time as a convict.  We then watch his struggle at the turning point to reclaim his humanity and his faith…and then his struggle for the rest of the book to keep them.  More on that later, though.  These first two volumes demonstrate Hugo’s ability to make mental struggle fascinating.  I think I recall that “man vs. himself” is one of the standard conflicts of literature, but I’ve rarely seen it explored to such an extent.

We meet several other principle characters in the first two volumes, particularly the Thenardiers and Inspector Javert.  I was actually a bit disappointed that we didn’t meet Javert sooner.  He turns up fairly far along, and there’s just a few references to establish that Javert knew Valjean while he was a convict.  So many other things are so much more elaborated upon, I hoped for more here.  What was here was good, though, and we delve into Javert’s mind some too.  I know people who just love Javert; I can’t say I’m one of them, but I do find him an intriguing character.

The Thenardiers probably diverged farthest from the musical version of the characters.  In the musical, they are nasty individuals, but they’re played for humor.  In the book, they’re not even remotely funny.  They’re just nasty, horrible, awful people.  Cosette’s situation living with them is incredibly heartrending.  Imagine whatever other “poor orphan waif” story you’ve read, multiply it a few times, and you’ll probably have it.  I think that was one of the most gripping sections of the book.

Volume II ends on what’s essentially a happy note, and we’ll leave it there for today.  Come back tomorrow to meet Monsieur Marius in Volume III!

Other reviews:
Compulsive Overreader
Teacups in the Garden
One More Page
Anyone else…?  I know I have readers who are Les Mis fans–send me links to your reviews and I’ll add them!

Buy it here: Les Miserables