Umm, so...as with War and Peace, how the heck do you review a novel that is part of the fabric of Western society; a book that has been around so long and was written by an author so esteemed as to have a reputation that proceeds the reading? Yeah, I don't know either.

I will say that I assigned a one-star deduction (no, I am not the Russian judge, though I am definitely partial to Russian literature, but I digress) for two reasons: a) some of the commentary, while relevant to the plot, meandered longer than was interesting - in most cases - for my liking. This surprised me. I like reading history and observations of society, plus I am generally a curious cat. Somehow, Hugo wasn't holding my attention in a lot of the passages that were away from the main action of the story. Reason b) all of the coincidences used to advance the plot were hard to swallow. I will say that when I come across coincidences while I am reading fiction, it bugs the crap out of me. I mean really, really annoys me. Hugo, in using this device, managed to not wholly annoy me.

So, The main story was kick-ass and in these sections I was hard pressed to put the book down. Unlike Tolstoy, in War and Peace, I was not so riveted during the other chapters of the story. Sigh. Since Hugo is awesome - apparently that is what is says on his headstone: "Awesome" - I will take the blame for having some fault during the reading of Les Misérables. I'm still not gonna give back that deducted start, though, Hugo!