Les Misérables in Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge

Aug 28, 2014 Nikki rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, audiobooks, historical-fiction, saw-the-movie, guardian-1000-novels, books-set-in-france

It took me two solid months of dog-walking and listening at other times to finish this book, and since other long-awaited books were calling to me, I was sometimes tempted to take a break, but I feared that if I stopped listening I would not resume. I'm glad I stuck with it, not just to check off another on the Guardian's 1000 Novels list, but because it was a great story written by a great spirit.

Before embarking on this voyage, I knew Les Misérables only from an abridged version in my childho It took me two solid months of dog-walking and listening at other times to finish this book, and since other long-awaited books were calling to me, I was sometimes tempted to take a break, but I feared that if I stopped listening I would not resume. I'm glad I stuck with it, not just to check off another on the Guardian's 1000 Novels list, but because it was a great story written by a great spirit.

Before embarking on this voyage, I knew Les Misérables only from an abridged version in my childhood Book of Knowledge and, of course, the musical. Although I'd listened to the music a lot, I had only seen it on stage in a "Jr." version (acted by young people) and quite recently, the film version of the musical. I enjoyed listening to the book in part because there was so much more of the backstory of the characters. (Not that Schönberg, Boublil, et al can be faulted for what they left out; I think they, and director Tom Hooper, made good artistic decisions to condense the story into a manageable performance.) Through these lengthy character introductions, we learn how Valjean, the Bishop, Fantine, Marius, the Thenardiers and others became who they are. Their various actions become more believable when we can see their pasts. In particular the love story of Marius and Cosette becomes more real by Hugo's following it through its stops and starts. I also learned a bit more of French history, especially the post-Napoleonic time, than I had known before.

Besides its length, flowery language (but I must say Julie Rose's translation seems excellent, particularly in its use of slang), and numerous references to Paris streets and buildings old and "new" (in 1862), modern readers will probably find some of Hugo's ideas about women hard to swallow. Social class, beauty, and relationship or lack of one with a man, seem to define womanhood for Hugo. Even the tragic heroine Eponine does what she does at the barricades only for love of Marius -- she is unable to imagine that revolution could have something to do with her own life. Hugo shows his romantic, Victorian view of women not only in the characters he writes, but in long disquisitions on Womanhood with a capital W, which I suspect even the most conventional woman of his time would have read with an inward smile or shudder.

I enjoyed George Guidall's narration; the only reason I might wish to have read this book in print would be that it annoys me slightly not to see the French names (streets, characters, etc.) and how they are spelled. I'd love to see an annotated version with drawings or photos of objects and places described in the text, but it would be an enormous tome.

I don't know that I would recommend this audiobook to someone driving on a long journey, because some of Hugo's long digressions on convents, sewers, etc. might cause drowsiness. But if for some reason you have 60 or so hours to spend listening to a book, this one really is worth your while. ...more

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May 03, 2011 Beth Given rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

I get nervous reading classics. I am pretty much intimidated by them. When this monster arrived from half.com (800+ dense pages, and this is one of the abridged editions we're talking about here), I kind of wanted to cry. I am pretty sure this is the longest single book I've ever attempted.

But it was the book club pick, and so I started reading. I was only vaguely familiar with the storyline (I think I must have started this in high school but didn't get very far -- and I kind of knew the songs ...more

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