Valerie’s Reviews > Les Misérables > Status Update

"To breathe Paris enlivens the soul." This might be the first quote of the book that I can relate to. This section did have a very interesting discussion of the nature of God, and a comparison of cloistered nuns and convicts serving out their sentences that was thought provoking. I am appreciating the cat and mouse nature of the Javert/Valjean relationship which is much more detailed than in the musical.

19 chapters on the Battle of Waterloo finished, and only in the last few paragraphs of the last chapter, did something happen to move the plot of the story along. Hopefully the plot will pick up again for a while in the next section.

I've just read an entire chapter that listed things that happened in 1817. Hugo argues they aren't trivial, but without the context to appreciate them, which he doesn't provide, I don't see how they can be called anything but trivial. I'm not giving up yet, but so far, this book has proved to be neither entertaining nor thought-provoking.