Matthew Hodge’s Reviews > Les Misérables > Status Update
Matthew Hodge
is 15% done
"The eye of the spirit can nowhere find more dazzling brilliance and more shadow than in man; it can fix itself on no other thing which is more formidable, more complicated, more mysterious, and more infinite. There is a spectacle more grand than the sea; it is heaven: there is a spectacle more grand than heaven; it is the inmost recesses of the soul."
— May 27, 2015 12:56AM
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Matthew’s Previous Updates
Matthew Hodge
is 86% done
Reading the chapter about Bruneseau exploring and disinfecting the sewers of Paris. An almost completely unnecessary side-tangent to the main story but WHAT a tangent. Who would want to cut stuff like this out of the novel?
— Feb 21, 2016 01:14PM
Matthew Hodge
is 13% done
Never read it before and obviously there is much that gets lost on a non-French reader but the impact of Hugo's unabashedly bold contrast of utter misery with life-transforming kindness is jolting. It shines down the many years since he wrote it and stirs something in us even today. (And this is even when we have a famous musical to give us the short version of the story.)
— May 22, 2015 01:20AM
