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Nov. 19th, 2003 06:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhToday, I finished Les Miserables. I have been trying to read this book for nearly five years, and I could never manage to finish it. But I finally did! All 1,463 pages of it.
My conclusion?
Cosette and Marius have the most retarded relationship ever- who nearly commits suicide over a girl they've never even spoken to?
All the main characters- Cosette, Marius, and Jean Valjean, are the epitome of boring, goody-goodies. If these were real people, they would be the kind that makes you hide whenever you see them, because God, do you not want to get into yet another dragging conversation with them. They are so uninteresting, it's unbelievable.
The one fairly interesting character- Eponine- gets paid no attention at all by the narrator, and gets killed off way too quickly.
The slashy couple- Enjolras and Grantaire (and by the way, let me quote, in case you doubt the slashiness: "Still, this skeptic had fanaticism. This fanaticism was not for an idea, nor a dogma, nor an art, nor a science; it was for a man: Enjolras. Grantaire admired, loved, venerated Enjolras. (...) Grantaire, crawling with doubt, loved to see faith soaring in Enjolras. He needed Enjolras. Without understanding it clearly, and without trying to explain it to himself, that chaste, healthy, firm, direct, hard, honest nature charmed him. Instinctively, he admired his opposite. His soft, wavering, disjointed, diseased, deformed ideas hitched onto Enjolras as to a backbone. His moral spine leaned on that firmness. Beside Enjolras, Grantaire become somebody again." Oh, yeah.)- anyway, they get ignored through the whole book before getting killed off also.
Victor Hugo needs a freaking editor. While I'm sure he was very interested in incredibly precise details of the battle of Waterloo, or the history of Paris's sewers, or the effect of slang on the morals of the lower class, or his personal theories on prayer, I. Do. Not. Care. When more of the pages of a book are devoted to random tangents than the actual plot and characters, it is a Bad Thing.
All the cool scenes I had expected from Les Mis movies and musicals- the barricades, Javert's suicide, Eponine's self-sacrifice- get skimmed over. Usually so Hugo can spend yet more time expounding on the moral of the book. Because Poverty Is Bad. Who knew? Yes, I know, it was quite a shock for me too. I'm so glad he spent chapters and chapters and chapters and More Freakin Chapters on the topic.
But! I finished it! I can now cross it off my list of things 'To Do Before I Die' and never worry about it again. Go me.
My conclusion?
Cosette and Marius have the most retarded relationship ever- who nearly commits suicide over a girl they've never even spoken to?
All the main characters- Cosette, Marius, and Jean Valjean, are the epitome of boring, goody-goodies. If these were real people, they would be the kind that makes you hide whenever you see them, because God, do you not want to get into yet another dragging conversation with them. They are so uninteresting, it's unbelievable.
The one fairly interesting character- Eponine- gets paid no attention at all by the narrator, and gets killed off way too quickly.
The slashy couple- Enjolras and Grantaire (and by the way, let me quote, in case you doubt the slashiness: "Still, this skeptic had fanaticism. This fanaticism was not for an idea, nor a dogma, nor an art, nor a science; it was for a man: Enjolras. Grantaire admired, loved, venerated Enjolras. (...) Grantaire, crawling with doubt, loved to see faith soaring in Enjolras. He needed Enjolras. Without understanding it clearly, and without trying to explain it to himself, that chaste, healthy, firm, direct, hard, honest nature charmed him. Instinctively, he admired his opposite. His soft, wavering, disjointed, diseased, deformed ideas hitched onto Enjolras as to a backbone. His moral spine leaned on that firmness. Beside Enjolras, Grantaire become somebody again." Oh, yeah.)- anyway, they get ignored through the whole book before getting killed off also.
Victor Hugo needs a freaking editor. While I'm sure he was very interested in incredibly precise details of the battle of Waterloo, or the history of Paris's sewers, or the effect of slang on the morals of the lower class, or his personal theories on prayer, I. Do. Not. Care. When more of the pages of a book are devoted to random tangents than the actual plot and characters, it is a Bad Thing.
All the cool scenes I had expected from Les Mis movies and musicals- the barricades, Javert's suicide, Eponine's self-sacrifice- get skimmed over. Usually so Hugo can spend yet more time expounding on the moral of the book. Because Poverty Is Bad. Who knew? Yes, I know, it was quite a shock for me too. I'm so glad he spent chapters and chapters and chapters and More Freakin Chapters on the topic.
But! I finished it! I can now cross it off my list of things 'To Do Before I Die' and never worry about it again. Go me.
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Date: 2003-11-19 11:24 pm (UTC)Although I did throw it across the room in frustration several times, which is why it took so long to finish. Heh. If I'd known, back in the day when I was buying my copy, just how long the freaking thing would be haunting me, I... well, I'd probably still have bought it. I'm a masochist like that. ^^;