In my edition, Pierre Gringoire's peroration when pleading for his life: "One man gets praised for what another gets blamed for. Real legal systems everywhere still love a good eyewitness account.Īnd always fun to catch the earnest literature professor writing the explanatory notes in a howler: Like Dostoyevsky and Zola, he derides the great credence given to eyewitness testimony despite its subjectivity and unreliability. The legal system is roundly condemned as unjust, biased, and sometimes perverse.
Not a book for monarchists, reactionaries, or capital punishment enthusiasts. A human rights activist and social commentator, the author sneaks in quite a lot of criticism of contemporary France (he wrote the book in 1830, shortly after the real-life background events of Les Mis, about Paris in 1482, and subtly draws parallels between a medieval Paris of persecution and hideous cruelty and unconcern about the disadvantaged, and the situation in 1830). Nevertheless, it's a hugely enjoyable Gothic romp, and the secondary human characters are vivid and memorable. Like the loooonnng section in Les Mis about the Paris sewerage system, this does get in the way of the storyline a bit.
There is A LOT in it about Gothic architecture, which was one of Hugo's passions. There is a hunchback and a beautiful gypsy woman and a doomed love story and cruelty and jealousy and persecution - but the principal character in this novel is the city of Paris, particularly the environs of the titular cathedral.
And if you're going to dive into Victor Hugo, surely you want the beautiful descriptive prose, the classical and Biblical and historical allusions, the social commentary and humanism ?īut Hugo tyros should take note of the original title of the book. I'm not a fan of abridged books - after all, who does the abridging ? Not usually the genius who wrote the original. Like a lot of novels of this era, it's very long, and does have its tedious passages. Not the equal of Les Miserables, but a fine novel.
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