Deirdre read and liked Jacob's review of Les Misérables:

"I'm hopeless at writing book reviews. Completely hopeless. Can't do it to save my life. I usually end giving too much detail in the summary and then stumble through a dissection of the theme. What a way to butcher a book. And with a book as grea...more I'm hopeless at writing book reviews. Completely hopeless. Can't do it to save my life. I usually end giving too much detail in the summary and then stumble through a dissection of the theme. What a way to butcher a book. And with a book as great as Les Misérables, I doubt I could really do it justice. Even with multiple edits and revisions. Besides, I probably can't say anything about the book itself that hasn't already been said before, so I'll offer some personal reflections instead. Hopefully that works. And here we go!

When I was about halfway through Les Mis, I came across an abridged version in a local bookstore. My copy, unabridged, is 1,463 pages. The abridged copy? Less than 500. Huh? I was shocked. Even though I could tell, from my reading, that it was entirely possible to cut out nearly a thousand pages, I still read the entire freakin' book.

And so should you! Because any publisher worth his weight, and any reader worth his spit, should know that this is not "Jean Valjean Goes to Paris." This is not a jolly little story about a guy who has a handful of adventures after he gets out of jail. This is Les Misérables--Les Freakin' Misérables, a title that cannot be translated into a wimpy language like English without looking incredibly stupid--and if you want the abridged version, go see the damn musical. Which is amazing, by the way.

But whether you've seen the musical or not, if you want to read the book, you will not read the abridged version. Don't you dare. Don't even think the word "abridged." Yeah, I know, Victor Hugo frequently turns away from the main narrative to focus on side characters, historical events, religion, philosophy, and other subjects. That's why this isn't called "Jean Valjean's Excellent Adventure." Victor Hugo had more than a story to tell--he had an entire world. To cut all that out, so you just have the barest amount of the original story--you have the Wishbone version. Which is probably pretty good, actually, if it exists, so I'll start again. Take out those thousand pages of subplots and side stories, and you have--well, I can't even imagine what that's like.

Yes, I'll confess, my eyes occasionally glazed over during some of Hugo's lengthier side narratives. Yeah, I started to get a bit frustrated when, about 800 pages in, Hugo was still introducing characters (the middle part, that great hump in which we meet Marius is the hardest part to get through, but after all, it was the halfway point, and Marius wasn't exactly my favorite character). And, I'll admit, I got a bit frustrated during my final 2-day, 400-page marathon for the end when, during the more exciting parts of the story, Hugo took a step back from the barricades and the escapes and the recovery to focus on, say, the history of the Paris sewers.

But despite all that, I loved the entire thing. I couldn't help myself. This fantastic novel was never intended to be a thrilling action book. If I wanted to read something quick and exciting, I would grab any one of those grocery store books with a two-week shelf life. But Les Mis isn't a couple of cliffhangers and a cookie-cutter ending. It's more than that. This (here's where the attempt at legitimate review via multiple edits and revisions comes in) is a story about people trying to reconcile their beliefs in spiritual redemption offered by a loving God with their futile aattempts to find redemption in a rigid and unyielding world that neither forgives nor forgets. Hell, this is a story about Humanity in all its glory and ugliness. And to paraphrase a certain Monsieur T, I pity the fool who thinks he can get all that in the abridged version. 500 pages? Dubya-tee-eff?

I knew, when I picked this one up, that I wanted to read something big, lengthy, and dense. I knew it would be a challenge to finish in a reasonable time, but I wasn't worried. I had plenty of free time, wanted to lose myself in a good book, and Les Mis seemed the perfect book for the occasion. And I gotta say, I was right.

And now, on to War and Peace!
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