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Les Misérables

Victor Hugo

Start date: July 1, 2024

Finish date: September 30, 2024

Why we're reading this: 3rd Quarter 2024 Long Read
4th Quarter 2014 Long Read

Previous Group Reads:
Book of the Month Group Read, Ju…more
[close] 3rd Quarter 2024 Long Read
4th Quarter 2014 Long Read

Previous Group Reads:
Book of the Month Group Read, July/Aug 2011, & cont'd into Sept/Oct/Nov 2011

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What Members Thought

Feb 08, 2014 Michael Sump rated it it was amazing

I read the entire book, 1850 electronic pages, on my Droid. My phone is now a successful delivery system for books.

This is a great book. It is the first work of Victor Hugo that I have read, but it will not be the last. He is a powerful writer and thinker. I recommend this novel to anyone.

I have seen the musical “Les Mis” 2 or 3 times, and I have seen the movie that came out last year or the year before. The one with Hugh Jackman as Jean Valjean. I will only say that I didn't really know the s I read the entire book, 1850 electronic pages, on my Droid. My phone is now a successful delivery system for books.

This is a great book. It is the first work of Victor Hugo that I have read, but it will not be the last. He is a powerful writer and thinker. I recommend this novel to anyone.

I have seen the musical “Les Mis” 2 or 3 times, and I have seen the movie that came out last year or the year before. The one with Hugh Jackman as Jean Valjean. I will only say that I didn't really know the story before reading the novel. Months ago, I remarked to my wife that I had read 100 pages before encountering someone that I knew. It was the bishop. The story in the book is very rich and detailed.

The movie enlarged my understanding of the story and I think that they did a respectable job at telling Hugo's tale. Javier, Valjean, Fantine, Cosette...they are all there but the next tier of characters really came alive for me in the book. Thernadier, an absolute corruption. The urchins of the streets. The middle class revolutionaries. Marius, the son of a Napoleonic Colonel and the grandson of a Royalist.

We all know the story of Javier's pursuit of Valjean, an escaped convict who first fell under the law for stealing a loaf of bread--but Hugo's story is so much larger. Hugo's story is literally the history of France, from a period of feudalism at the story's beginnings, through the glory (and crimes) of the Revolution, through the grandeur of the days of Napoleonic Empire, back to a Royalist France and the rise of subsequent revolutions. I've read the dry recounting of 1789 to 1833, but Hugo made me feel the plight of the people. The alternative feelings of passivity and revolt, returning again and again over the decades.

One example. I have read and studied and pondered the Battle of Waterloo. There were mistakes, there was luck, there was futile courage, and—in the end—the Empire of France died. But Hugo takes us onto the battlefield, into a sunken road that crosses the land between the lines, and into a ditch where what's left of Napoleon's calvary is piled in a mass of blood and hoofs and death. Here we meet Thernadier, who's there to steal and to scavenge. Here we meet the father of Marius, Colonel Pontmercy, whose life is accidentally saved by Thernadier. It's a mind blowing scene that sets the stage for the dynamic conflict between the Royalist grandfather, the Napoleonic father, and the eventually revolutionary son, Marius, the husband of Cosette.

I should not slight Jean Valjean. The convict, the man of the galleys. Through the kindness of the bishop, he became a great businessman and philanthropist. He vividly symbolizes the suffering of the people under a system both cruel and unjust and, through his evolution as a “self made man,” we see the power and redemption of freedom and enterprise.

This is a big book, an important book, and one that was worth the the very long time that it took to read it.
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