book review of les miserables

About the Author: Victor Hugo

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If anything is horrible, if there is a reality that surpasses our worst dreams, it is this: to live, to see the sun, to be in full possession of manly vigor, to have health and joy, to laugh heartily, to rush toward a glory that lures you on, to feel lungs that breathe, a heart that beats, a mind that thinks, to speak, to hope, to love; to have mother, wife, children, to have sunlight, and suddenly, in less time than it takes to cry out, to plunge into an abyss, to fall, to roll, to crush, to be crushed, to see the heads of grain, the flowers, the leaves, the branches, unable to catch hold of anything, to feel your sword useless, men under you, horses over you, to struggle in vain, your bones were broken by some kick in the darkness, to feel a heel gouging your eyes out of their sockets, raging atthe horseshoe between your teeth, to stifle, to howl, to twist, to be under all this and to say, “Just then I was a living man!” ---Quoted on page 353

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The Legacy of ‘Les Misérables’: Charting the Life of a Classic

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THE NOVEL OF THE CENTURY The Extraordinary Adventure of “Les Misérables” By David Bellos 307 pp. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $27.

A good book could be written about the bastardization of great novels, and Victor Hugo’s “Les Misérables” would make a fine Exhibit A. Rarely has any work of literature received such a pummeling at the hands of a succession of publishers, translators, filmmakers and musical impresarios, as David Bellos demonstrates in “The Novel of the Century,” his intriguing new history of Hugo’s 1,500-page masterpiece.

“Les Misérables” was published in France in 1862. An English-language version appeared in New York that same year, thanks to a justly hailed translation that the American Egyptologist Charles Wilbour completed in only six months. But right away there were signs the novel would take on a life of its own: A pirated version of Wilbour’s translation was soon released in Richmond, Va., where the Union’s copyright laws did not apply. All of Hugo’s references to the evils of slavery were struck out. (“The absence of a few antislavery paragraphs will hardly be complained of by Southern readers,” the preface proposed.) Hugo’s doctored novel went on to become such an emphatic hit in the South that the downbeaten soldiers of Robert E. Lee took to calling themselves “Lee’s miserables.”

There was distortion of another sort in the first British translation, by Sir Charles Lascelles Wraxall, also published in 1862. According to Bellos, Wraxall, a historian who fancied himself an expert on Waterloo, did not hesitate to alter the meaning of Hugo’s novel whenever he disagreed with passages pertaining to Napoleon Bonaparte’s downfall.

Bellos also relates how filmmakers from around the world have betrayed the original by putting “back in what Hugo so pointedly omits” — namely, organized religion. Though Hugo professed to believe in God, he did not subscribe to any one faith and was determined, Bellos says, not to let the Catholic Church “think it has a role in the ‘indefinite but unshakable’ religious slant of ‘Les Misérables.’ ” Tom Hooper’s unfortunate decision to shoot some scenes of his 2012 musical adaptation in Winchester Cathedral ran contrary to the novel, which never once enters a church.

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Book Review: Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

August 23, 2011 By Jessica Filed Under: Book Review 3 Comments

Les Miserables

Introducing one of the most famous characters in literature, Jean Valjean - the noble peasant imprisoned for stealing a loaf of bread - Les Misérables (1862) ranks among the greatest novels of all time. In it Victor Hugo takes readers deep into the Parisian underworld, immerses them in a battle between good and evil, and carries them onto the barricades during the uprising of 1832 with a breathtaking realism that is unsurpassed in modern prose.

I read Les Miserables unabridged.  I read it because I wanted to know what really happens at the end since this 1400 + page book is usually abridged. Call it the rebel in me, but why should I let someone else choose what I should read out of this book?  Oh, you don’t think I can read the whole thing?  WATCH ME.

In addition to my rebelliousness, three separate people said to me with passion that I had to read Les Mis unabridged and I have to say it was worth it. The ending was amazing! It took me about 5 years to read it.  I spent about 1 year actually reading it and 4 years convincing myself to read it.  Cliffnotes were essential in me being able to finish it.  Since I took long breaks from it, I would read all the summaries up to where I had stopped.

The story has an epic feel to it, but the plot was often interrupted by what I called “political rants” that ran on for about 20-30 pages.  These little rants are probably what gets edited out in abridged versions.  You’d come across a nunnery in the narrative and Victor Hugo would go, “Speaking of nuns…” and ramble on for 30 pages about what exactly he thought about nuns.  Here’s a list of the political essays (which I named myself) that he inserted into Les Mis:

• The Battle of Waterloo (50 pages!) (Part 1, Book 1: Waterloo)
• The Uselessness of Convents (Part 2, Book 7: A Parenthesis)
• The Need for Universal Education  (Part 3, Book 1: Paris Atomized)
• Politics of 1815-1832 (Part 4, Book 1: A Few Pages of History)
• Slang (Part 4, Book 7: Argot)
• Sewers and Poop (Part 5, Book 2: The Intestine of Leviathan)

What struck me the most about his essays was not how different the problems were back then, but how much they are the same .  Don’t we still argue about politics and education today?  Another thing that I noticed about the unabridged version was the fact that you got to learn the entire back story for almost every character you met.  It added such depth and color to the story and made it truly unique.

Content Rating : None

About Victor Hugo

Victor Marie Hugo (26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French poet, novelist, and dramatist of the Romantic movement. He is considered one of the greatest and best known French writers. In France, Hugo's literary fame comes first from his poetry but also rests upon his novels and his dramatic achievements. Among many volumes of poetry, Les Contemplations and La Légende des siècles stand particularly high in critical esteem. Outside France, his best-known works are the novels Les Misérables, 1862, and Notre-Dame de Paris, 1831 (known in English as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame). Though a committed royalist when he was young, Hugo's views changed as the decades passed; he became a passionate supporter of republicanism, and his work touches upon most of the political and social issues and artistic trends of his time. He was buried in the Panthéon.

August 24, 2011 at 6:45 am

Great review! You have a fabulous blog! I’m an author and illustrator and I made some awards to give to fellow bloggers whose sites I enjoy. It’s not a pass on award. This is just for you to keep. I want to award you with the Best Books Blog Award for all the hard work you do! Thank you so much for taking the time to read and review all these books for us authors and readers.

Go to http://astorybookworld.blogspot.com/p/awards.html and pick up your award. ~Deirdra

August 24, 2011 at 7:18 am

Wow. I am really impressed that you finished this book. Congratulations!

August 27, 2011 at 7:54 am

so cool … I think I’ll just skip straight to the political essays/rants.

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Victor Hugo's Les Misérables: a game with destiny

To begin with the central problem: the exorbitant length. Les Misérables is one of the longest novels in European literature. But length is not just a question of pages, it's also a question of tempo. And this is why Les Misérables is longer than the arithmetic of its length.

In his essay "The Curtain", Milan Kundera writes how "aesthetic concepts began to interest me only when I first perceived their existential roots, when I came to understand them as existential concepts . . ." A form is not free-floating; it is not purely a technical exercise, an external imposition. It is intimately, intricately linked to what it describes. "In the art of the novel," Kundera adds, "existential discoveries are inseparable from the transformation of form."

And the most obvious transformation Victor Hugo effects in the novel's form is sheer gargantuan size. This megalomania was a conscious choice on Hugo's part. To describe his work in progress, he jotted down a list of hyperbolic adjectives: "Astounding, extraordinary, surprising, superhuman, supernatural, unheard of, savage, sinister, formidable, gigantic, savage, colossal, monstrous, deformed, disturbed, electrifying, lugubrious, funereal, hideous, terrifying, shadowy, mysterious, fantastic, nocturnal, crepuscular."

The size was the centre of Hugo's discovery in the art of the novel. And this is visible immediately: it's visible, to the perturbed reader, in the second of this novel's many sentences. The beginning, it turns out, is not a beginning at all. "There is something we might mention that has no bearing whatsoever on the tale we have to tell - not even on the background." Les Misérables begins with a digression from a digression (thus resembling Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary, which a few years earlier had begun with a digression, too.) Here, at the start, Hugo was trying to set up a narrative convention, derived from the novel's deep theory.

When the book was finished, Hugo tried - and failed - to write a preface. The preface would have begun like this: "This book has been composed from the inside out. The idea engenders the characters, the characters produce the drama, and this is, in effect, the law of art. By having the ideal, that is God, as the generator instead of the idea, we can see that it fulfils the same function as nature. Destiny and in particular life, time and in particular this century, man and in particular the people, God and in particular the world, this is what I have tried to include in this book; it is a sort of essay on the infinite."

The subject of one of the longest novels in European literature is - what else? - the infinite.

That is why its tempo is so explicit with slowness, syncopated with digression. But in this novel there is no such thing as a digression. Everything is relevant - since the subject of this book, quite literally, is everything: "This book is a tragedy in which infinity plays the lead," writes Hugo. "Man plays a supporting role."

"When the subject is not lost sight of, there is no digression," Hugo wrote later on. But how can the subject of the novel ever be lost sight of, if the lead character is infinity? In that case, nothing will ever be a digression.

Yes, the length of this novel is important. Its quantity is its quality. It represents an answer to a central artistic question, which was not an answer the tradition of the novel has ever quite believed in since. This is one reason why Hugo's novel is so strange, and so valuable.

"Really, universally, relations stop nowhere," Henry James would write, 40 years later, in his preface to the New York Edition of his early novel Roderick Hudson, "and the exquisite problem of the artist is eternally but to draw, by a geometry of his own, the circle within which they shall happily appear to do so." Life was infinite, argued James, but the novel therefore required a form which gave the illusion of completeness. James, after all, had learned the art of the novel from Flaubert. According to this modernist tradition, the novel was an art of miniaturisation, and indirection.

Hugo, however, had come up with a new solution, no less artful than the solution proposed by Flaubert and James. He wanted to create a novel which would try to represent everything by pretending that it did, in fact, represent everything. It would be wilfully ramshackle and inclusive - both on the level of form, and on the level of content: an essayistic novel, or a novelistic essay. "The eye of the drama must be everywhere at once," wrote Hugo. For every plot, seen from the angle of Hugo's style, was infinite.

In some ways, the plot of Les Misérables is simple. It is the story of an escaped convict, Jean Valjean, who determines to reform after being saved by the Bishop of Digne; Javert, the policeman who wants to see him rightfully punished according to the law; a dead prostitute, Fantine, and her illegitimate daughter, Cosette, who is entrusted to Valjean's care; an evil inn-keeping couple, the Thénardiers, and their urchin children, Éponine and Gavroche; and Marius, who falls in love with Cosette, and who is the son of a Napoleonic hero who died believing wrongly that he had once been saved on the field of Waterloo by Thénardier, who was in fact a scavenging thief.

This might sound tightly plotted, taut with melodrama. It might sound like a good plot for a musical. But no one can read Les Misérables for the cleverness or subtlety of its plot. It is not a novel which prides itself on believability. This might seem surprising - since one natural assumption, perhaps, is that improbability in a novel should diminish with length. In Tolstoy's War and Peace, if people coincide, or marry each other, it still seems probable. Every decision retains its fluidity. And yet in Les Misérables this isn't true. In this gargantuan novel, everything seems utterly improbable. Every plot operates through coincidence. Normally, novelists develop techniques to naturalise and hide this. Hugo, with his technique of massive length, refuses to hide it at all. In fact, he makes sure that the plot's coincidences are exaggerated.

It could be argued that the persistent weakness of the plotting is its strength. This, after all, is how coincidence often happens in real life - thinly. But the overwhelming impression is of schlock. And so it might be right to remember that Hugo's original title for his novel was Les Misères, not Les Misérables: which echoed Eugène Sue's recent bestseller, Les Mystères de Paris. Hugo's novel would offer miseries, not mysteries. But it would be part of the same urban pulp tradition. Schlock, however, can make existential discoveries too.

One way in which Hugo emphasises the coincidences in his novel is the persistent failures of recognition. This occurs on the level of the characters - where a father does not recognise his son, or a criminal does not recognise the very person he has been pursuing for years. And it occurs on the level of the narration, where the narrator withholds the name of a character throughout an entire episode. Partly, perhaps, this adds to suspense: it creates moments of dramatic irony. But really it's to create a bifocal effect. Hugo wants a plot that is at once about total randomness, and also total predetermination. The novel, therefore, is written from two perspectives. The perspective of mankind, and the perspective of God - or Destiny.

"We chip away as best we can at the mysterious block of marble our lives are made of - in vain; the black vein of destiny always reappears." Hugo is echoing Hamlet here: "There's a divinity that shapes our ends, / Rough-hew them how we will . . ." His aim is to stress the weird mixture of freedom and predetermination which is the essence of his novel.

Les Misérables is a game with destiny: it dramatises the gap between the imperfections of human judgments, and the perfect patterns of the infinite. The reason for including so much of the world's matter was to work out how mystical the world was. As he put it in Les Misérables: "How do we know the creation of worlds is not determined by the falling of grains of sand? Who, after all, knows the reciprocal ebb and flow of the infinitely big and the infinitely small, the reverberation of causes in the chasms of a being, the avalanches of creation? A cheese mite matters; the small is big, the big is small; everything is in equilibrium within necessity - a frightening vision for the mind." He wanted pattern. But he wanted it only after subjecting the form to its limits, stuffing it with random accreted details - like the man fighting at the barricades, who "had padded his chest with a breastplate of nine sheets of grey packing paper and was armed with a saddler's awl". Meaning could be revealed only by slowing down the tempo of each scene: pausing it in the infinity of its detail.

What is relevant? This is the meaning of Hugo's long novel and its slow tempo - heavy with detail. How can you know what fact will emerge, and destroy you? How can you know what will become a trap, and what will not? We live our lives so blissful in our ignorance of an infinity which could invade us at any moment.

Hugo's form, predicated on length, on digression and detail, is a deliberate accretion of overlapping examples: his scenes are all variations on the same theme. That is why the novelist Mario Vargas Llosa has described how Hugo's main scenes are "irresistible traps" - volcanic craters, where chaos suddenly acquires logic. (And yet, how strenuously do Hugo's characters try to resist the traps of the world!)

Whether Hugo is writing about the historical battle of Waterloo or the fictional journey to Arras, his scenes obey the same constraints: a mass of infinite detail, which coalesces to form a trap, an unstoppable destiny.

According to Hugo, the battle of Waterloo was determined by the weather. "If it hadn't rained during the night of June 17-18, 1815," writes Hugo, "the future of Europe would have been different. A few drops of water, more or less, brought Napoléon to his knees. So that Waterloo could be the end of Austerlitz, Providence needed only a bit of rain, and a cloud crossing the sky out of season was enough for a whole world to disintegrate."

It looks like an essay on Waterloo; just as Valjean's story looks like a story about the tribulations of an escaped convict. In both cases, however, the true subject is chance: "the immense strokes of luck, good or bad, that are calibrated by an infinity that escapes us".

Hugo's length does not just represent a philosophy: it is also a politics. In Les Misérables, there is a correlation between the infinite and the unknown; and another correlation between the unknown and the miserable - the destitute. This is why Hugo can move so fluently from a detail to its moral or political halo. Everything is linked by his thematic network. Perhaps it's a pity, therefore, that all that survived of his preface to the novel was a single, dogmatic sentence: "As long as social damnation exists, through laws and customs, artificially creating hell at the heart of civilisation and muddying a destiny that is divine with human calamity; as long as the three problems of the century - man's debasement through the proletariat, woman's demoralisation through hunger, the wasting of the child through darkness - are not resolved; as long as social suffocation is possible in certain areas; in other words, and to take an even broader view, as long as ignorance and misery exist in this world, books like the one you are about to read are, perhaps, not entirely useless."

Hugo's epigraph limits his novel too neatly. It's true that the same triad of the needy - which corresponds to Valjean, Fantine and Cosette - is restated by two characters in the novel. But Hugo was not simply a political writer. How could he be? His subject was the infinite.

In an abandoned section on prostitution, Hugo wrote: "The portion of fate that depends on man is called 'misère', and it can be abolished. The portion of fate that depends on the unknown is called 'douleur', and this must be considered and explored with trepidation." He was an ontological pessimist, and a historical optimist. This was why Flaubert was unfair to mock Hugo for "the Catholic-socialist dregs . . . the philosophical-evangelist vermin" who admired his novel. Hugo's novel was grander than its politics. It was not so limited.

Many years earlier, in his preface to a collection of poetry, Inner Voices, dated June 24 1837, Hugo had said that the poet's duty was to elevate political events to the dignity of historical events. This fluidity between the political and the historical is central to Les Misérables. Hugo wanted to transform politics into history, and rewrite history so that it included the unknown, the ignored, the forgotten - a version of history that would inevitably, therefore, be both an exercise in philosophy and an exercise in politics.

Les Misérables, let's remember, was a historical novel on its first publication. But what is a historical novel? With Les Misérables it allowed Hugo to rewrite history: to show how far history is fiction; how far fiction had always been taciturn about the mass of its editing.

In his chapter "The Year 1817", a four-page list of minute events, Hugo concludes: "History neglects nearly every one of these little details and cannot do otherwise if it is not to be swamped by the infinite minutiae. And yet, the details, which are wrongly described as little - there are no little facts in the human realm, any more than there are little leaves in the realm of vegetation - are useful."

It is this devotion to the infinitely unknown that makes Hugo so meticulous in giving the reader Valjean's prison numbers; and why Valjean's name is almost a tautology. Valjean is everyman: the anonymous, the ignored. That is the secret of his repetitive name (like Nabokov's criminal hero in his novel Despair: Hermann Hermann, a misprint for Mr Man Mr Man).

And it is also why Hugo is so careful to set the novel in the suburbs of Paris. It was the communist surrealist Louis Aragon who stated that "with Victor Hugo, Paris stops being the seat of the court to become the city of the people". Hugo was expert at describing the formless suburbs: "that funny, rather ugly semi-rural landscape, with its odd, dual nature, that surrounds certain big cities, notably Paris. To observe the urban outskirts is to observe the amphibian. End of trees, beginning of roofs, end of grass, beginning of pavement, end of furrows, beginning of shops, end of ruts, beginning of passions, end of divine murmuring, beginning of human racket . . ." Hugo's novel restores real life to the truth of its infinite length.

Before he describes the barricades of the 1832 revolution, Hugo returns to his theory of history, which is really a theory of detail. "The events we are about to relate belong to that dramatic and living reality that the historian sometimes neglects for want of space and time. But this is where, and we insist on this, this is where life is, the throbbing, the shuddering of humanity. Little details, as I think we may have said, are the foliage, so to speak, of big events and are lost in the remoteness of history." Hugo himself had already provided an example of this foliage - in his description of the battle of Waterloo. He had reinstated an episode which more prudish historians preferred to omit, describing the final desperate resistance of some French soldiers: "They could hear in the crepuscular gloom that cannons were being loaded, wicks were being lit and gleamed like the eyes of tigers in the night, making a circle around their heads, all the shot-firers of the English batteries approached the cannons, and then, deeply moved, holding the moment of reckoning hanging over these men, an English general - Colville according to some, Maitland according to others - cried out to them: 'Brave Frenchmen, give yourselves up!' Cambronne replied: 'Shit!'"

This word shit - which Hugo called "the misérable of words" - electrifies the long network of metaphors and themes in the novel. It relates the battle of Waterloo and its themes of chance and destiny to the sewers through which Valjean wanders after he has left the barricades; and it links the sewers to the underground slang, the argot, which Hugo delights to record in his prose. Most prison songs, after all, came from a great long cellar at Châtelet - "eight feet below the level of the Seine".

But it also invigorates the moral and political structure of the novel. Les Misérables is based on an ethics which believes in the triumph of the defeated.

At the novel's climax, Hugo describes how Marius "began to have an inkling of how incredibly lofty and solemn a figure this Jean Valjean was. An unheard-of virtue appeared to him, supreme and meek, humble in its immensity. The convict was transfigured into Christ." The novel possesses a logic of conversion. It is there in Javert's conversion towards the end of the novel: his sense of "some indefinable sense of justice according to God's rules that was the reverse of justice according to man". And it is there in that miserable word "Shit!".

After describing Cambronne's last stand, Hugo describes the meaning of this word "Shit!", as shouted to the English at Waterloo. "To say that," he writes, "to do that, to come up with that - this is to be the victor." It was really Cambronne who won at the battle of Waterloo. That is Hugo's crazy, novelistically persuasive theory: Cambronne, who had made "the last of words the first". The triumph is truly his.

In Hugo's list of Parisian gangsters active in the 1830s, there is a stowaway:

"Panchaud, alias Printanier, alias Bigrenaille, or Hotwhack, Springlike, Golightly Brujon. (There was a whole dynasty of Brujons; we can't promise not to say more about this later.)

"Boulatruelle, the road-mender we have already met.

"Laveuve, or the Widow.

"Finistère.

"Homère Hugu, a black man.

"Mardisoir, or Tuesday night."

Homère Hugu, a black man! This alias is not the only one Hugo adopts in the novel, which is punctuated by stashed versions of the name Hugo. But Homère Hugu sums up his prose style in Les Misérables: a first-person warped autobiographical voice which improvises a slang version of epic.

This voice is the great formal invention of Hugo's novel - the support to the novel's length: a narrator who is unembarrassed by sententiae: sentimental interjections, melodramatic addresses to historical characters, one-word paragraphs, chains of adjectives linked only by their sound, characters who freeze into rants. A narrator devoted to the prolix, the comprehensive.

For the world of Les Misérables is one which has been comprehensively transformed into language. It is a new world, with its own conventions. And the gigantism of its plot operates through the range of Hugo's vocabulary. Nothing escapes Hugo's omnivorous collage, not the argot of the criminal underworld, nor songs in dialect, nor the scraps of paper scribbled with revolutionary notes which Hugo loves quoting - incomprehensible fragments, like imported nonsense poems.

This novel invents the idea of language as history, as deposit, as waste. It is a huge act of restitution: an exercise in the ignored. Yes, Les Misérables is a microcosmic, metaphoric novel. So that even Baudelaire - the modernist poet, the poet of dense economy - could write in Le Boulevard, on April 20 1862, that it was "a novel constructed like a poem". Its length is a formal property. Its style is saturated in its length.

But then again, Baudelaire didn't know the lengths to which Hugo would still go. In April 1862, after all, Baudelaire had only read Part I: Fantine. The rest was still to be published.

· Les Misérables by Victor Hugo is published by Vintage Classics this month.

• Victor Hugo

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The Terror of Knowing

Review | les misérables by victor hugo.

“ Introducing one of the most famous characters in literature, Jean Valjean–the noble peasant imprisoned for stealing a loaf of bread–Les Misérables ranks among the greatest novels of all time. In it, Victor Hugo takes readers deep into the Parisian underworld, immerses them in a battle between good and evil, and carries them to the barricades during the uprising of 1832 with a breathtaking realism that is unsurpassed in modern prose. Within his dramatic story are themes that capture the intellect and the emotions: crime and punishment, the relentless persecution of Valjean by Inspector Javert, the desperation of the prostitute Fantine, the amorality of the rogue Thénardier, and the universal desire to escape the prisons of our own minds. Les Misérables gave Victor Hugo a canvas upon which he portrayed his criticism of the French political and judicial systems, but the portrait that resulted is larger than life, epic in scope–an extravagant spectacle that dazzles the senses even as it touches the heart. “  ( Synopsis source )

Les Misérables  is a book with whom I have a history. My undergraduate dissertation is based, in large part, on this novel and its adaptations, and I’ve been to see the musical itself many times – it’s probably my favourite musical, all things considered. I’m more than familiar with its soaring themes of justice, redemption, faith, atonement etc. and its characters (I was a big observer of the barricade boys fandom on Tumblr and on fanfiction sites). Despite all this, I’d never fully read the novel, cover to cover; anyone who has ever done a dissertation on a book will tell you that selective skimming of it is sufficient so long as you close-read specific, well-chosen sections that advance your overarching argument. But I always felt a little bit of a fraud as I could never bring myself to legitimately say I had read the novel – I ran the Misérables May readalong to correct this.

“Teach the ignorant as much as you can; society is culpable in not providing a free education for all and it must answer for the night which it produces. If the soul is left in darkness sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.”

Victor Hugo’s novel is a huge sweeping tale based around its central character, Jean Valjean. A former convict, Valjean was imprisoned for stealing a loaf of bread to try to save his family from starvation and, as he kept trying to escape, his sentence became longer and longer when he was caught. When we start the novel he has been released on parole but this means he has a proverbial black mark against his name and he isn’t exactly welcomed in many of the rural towns of France that he wanders through. He finds work but isn’t paid fairly, inns turn him away because he’s a former convict, and it seems as though he has hit rock bottom even though he has done his time and ‘paid’ from his crime. Enter the Bishop, a too-good-for-this-world character, who, after Valjean steals his silver from him, willingly gives him a pair of silver candlesticks, and with them ‘buys his soul for God’. This starts off many a philosophical and moral dilemma for Valjean who didn’t have faith and didn’t feel like the world was on his side – with the Bishop forgiving him for his crime and telling him God would still have his soul, Valjean starts a journey of redemption.

“Love is the foolishness of men, and the wisdom of God.”

Of course, the story is much more complex – we have tenacious police officer, Javert, as Valjean’s antagonist; we have Fantine, a poor young girl blinded by love and left as a single mother trying to provide for her daughter before dying; we have the Thenardiers who exploit Fantine’s desperation and adopt her daughter, Cosette, to a loveless life of servitude; we have Marius, grandson of a royalist who ends up having rebellious republican feelings; we have Gavroche, a young urchin child in Paris that stands for all orphaned children on the streets at the time; and we have a group of enterprising Parisian revolutionaries hoping to incite rebellion in the now-little-known June Rebellion of 1832 . Regardless of what else you think of Victor Hugo’s novel, the mastery of weaving together so many threads of story and sustaining them for 1000+ pages is undeniable.

“There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher.”

Often commented on when it comes to  Les Misérables  is its length – the edition I read stood at some 1400 pages and it’s not lightly that its fans call it The Brick. As you might expect through such an expansive novel with a huge cast of characters, certain moments of the story are more gripping than others – for example, I found the sections where the Thenardier family disguise themselves as the Jondrettes and con people out of money particularly fun and engrossing, the section in the Parisian sewer system less so. What I’ve always found intriguing about the musical of Les Misérables  is how different themes and characters interest different people – I most enjoy the sections on the barricade with the revolutionary group Les amis de l’ABC, whereas a friend of mine loves the clash between Valjean and Javert the most.   The novel is no different. Well, except in one way – Victor Hugo is known for his digressions, digressions which test the very notion of the word by lasting for 50 pages at a time. These digressions serve to enrich the context of the novel’s story – the aforementioned journey into the sewer system is one such digression, another on the subject of Waterloo happens. However, none of these digressions are crucial to the advancement of the plot and I think this is why they, and the novel as a whole, can be hard to get through. Similarly, there are sections of the novel which read like treatises or polemics on particular social or political issues of the time – they aren’t strictly  necessary  for the sake of following the story, but they do enrich the understanding of the context around the characters which has produced the circumstances in which the story can happen. It still doesn’t make 50+ pages about literal shit any easier to stomach, though.

“To love or have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life. “

In conclusion,  Les Misérables  is a sweeping, expansive 19th-century novel that explores French history and politics, moral philosophical issues, topography and architecture of Paris, and antimonarchist sentiments, alongside universal themes of justice, faith, and love. To try to summarise or review it is a nearly impossible task. For all its high and lofty themes, it’s also a compelling story of complex characters with moments of light and shade which is probably more so why it has endured the centuries and become thought of as one of the greatest stories of all-time.

“So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation which, in the midst of civilization, artificially creates a hell on earth, and complicates with human fatality a destiny that is divine; so long as the three problems of the century – the degradation of man by the exploitation of his labour, the ruin of women by starvation and the atrophy of childhood by physical and spiritual night are not solved; so long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words and from a still broader point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, there should be a need for books such as this.”

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3 responses to “review | les misérables by victor hugo”.

[…] has a pattern of raising awareness of the awful state of poverty. Victor Hugo’s infamous Les Miserables is about revolution in France and the struggles of an entire cast of characters from varying […]

I’m not sure if I’ll be adding this to my TBR anytime soon but well done for reading this all the way through! I can’t imagine how frustrating the digressions would be to read through, but it sounds like you appreciate why Hugo might have put them there.

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I’m ashamed to say I’m French and have never read this… I loved your review 😊

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Les Misérables

Mercy Vs Law, Society Vs Humanity

Author: Victor Hugo

Les Miserables has long been a staple of our shared narrative – an epic story of heroism and villainy and all the shades of desperation and hopelessness that lie in between. Spawning numerous plays and movies, as well as countless adaptations and abridgements, Hugo’s story survives not because of its perfection but because of its uncompromising power.

I first encountered Les Miserables as a child right on the cusp of adulthood, although I was ultimately more inclined to childish things than the new world opening up to me. I saw Hugo’s story represented in a movie, which stayed mostly true to the overarching story; fifteen odd years later, I still remember the closing scene, the gut wrenching desire to cry, and the commentary on a “justice system” turned intolerably cruel. I’ve been promising myself to read the book ever since, but its sheer volume (1,000+ pages) and my first experience with Hugo (the slog through the digression that is known as Hunchback of Notre Dame , which is entirely more about the architecture of Notre Dame than the fate of the hunchback) kept me from approaching the task until now.

Ultimately, I’m glad that I took this long journey. It was an unforgettable foray into the depths of humanity at both its most angelic and most depraved. Hugo, however, remains a difficult author, not so much for his writing style (it’s languid and beautiful) but for his affinity to add non-fictional essays wherever possible, stilting what is a dynamic plot. But more on that later.

Jean Valjean, as the Mayor, by Gustave Brion

For those not in the know, Les Miserables follows the life of a man, Jean Valjean. Caught as a young man, stealing a loaf of bread to keep his sister and her needy children alive, Valjean was sentenced to 19 years of imprisonment and hard labor. As his body grew more stolid and strong, his soul collapsed within him. He emerges, having paid his supposed debt to society, but even still that is not enough. His sister and her children are gone, presumably long dead or else captured into prostitution, and Valjean, with his tell-tale convict papers, is not wanted anywhere in society. The bitterness is extreme and heartfelt and sets him on a dark path that is intercepted by a kindly Bishop who through one true act of kindness and forgiveness alters everything for Valjean and allows him to start over. But, secrets will out and Javert, the ineffable police inspector, is determined to capture the convict again.

As Valjean makes his journey through society, now hidden behind a secret name, success is offset by compassion. But nothing is so clear-cut in Hugo’s world, and the “justice” system is far from done. Javert is not the only antagonist, and soon circumstances put Valjean in a difficult position.

Meanwhile, Fatine, a young woman destroyed by the love of a man, is left pregnant, unmarried, and desperate. As she slowly works her way down in society, desperate to do anything to take care of her child, Cosette, destiny is set in motion. As Fatine sells first her hair, then her teeth, and finally her body, her path intersects with Valjean, and what’s right and what’s wrong takes them all far outside of the law and its steadfast interpretation by Javert.

As Les Miserables continues, other characters come and go. Dregs from the bottom of society, criminals, orphaned street children, policemen, and a wealthy young man consumed by monarchism and an ancient debt that will soon get him entangled in the mess of all the miserable people around him. It culminates in the June rebellion of 1832 where history and fate interweave, love and romance meet despair and war, idealism and reality clash, and the meaning of duty leads to shattering decisions.

Les Miserables ranges over a lifetime with Valjean starting as one type of person and then working his way through an incredible character arc, which pits his own delusion of his criminality against the necessity to thwart the law and protect the neglected and the brutalized. Valjean’s encounter with Fatine and her dying wish that he protect her daughter, held by a ruthless foster family, forces Valjean to take a strange path and find his own form of justice, his own definition of what’s right against what is legal. This is where the crux of the novel lies and where Hugo shines his brightest. The law is dogmatic whereas love and God are not. Human law is pitiless, but God’s law sees room for forgiveness and understanding. One thwarts and plays against the other, and simple interpretations are thrown aside as we submerge ourselves into the underworld of Paris and watch good intentions lead to criminal actions, lead to desperation, which then leads ultimately towards violence and a weird sort of connection. The world of the street is a dark place, but by our complacence have we not made it so? Have we not determined that once fallen escape and retribution are impossible?

The story lives up to its title. It’s a tear jerker and while some characters elicit more sympathy than others (I was so mad at Cosette and Marius by the end) Jean Valjean ties us emotionally to the narrative, even through Hugo’s sermonizing about everything ranging from the ultimate historical meaning of Waterloo to the creation of Paris sewers and a surprisingly long narrative on human waste and its existential meaning. If you can read through this tale and not cry – not feel for Jean Valjean as though he is a close and much abused friend – then you ultimately have no soul and no love for humanity. Hugo is a master at character and a master at revealing injustice in all its fetid ugliness.

A drawing of Cosette by Emilie Bayard, which appeared in the original edition of Les Misérables

What he is not a master of, however, is pacing. While the story is itself is sheer perfection, the delivery hurts the narrative and its forceful point. Hugo likes to ramble. A LOT. Because of this, I often found myself picking up the book, not for the joy of reading or the revelation of Hugo’s complex morality, but out of duty. This is a pure Hugo issue, and he is the only author to ever make me feel kindly towards abridging. Every time the narrative starts to build power and the theme force, Hugo stops and goes on (sometimes for hundreds of pages) about things that simply don’t matter to the story. This devalues everything he is working toward. As Valjean finds himself transforming into a father for Cosette and finally finding love among people, everything stops for pages and pages as we deep-dive on monasticism, specifically its merits and cultural implications as opposed to its unnecessary strictures and flaws. An interesting topic, sure, but does it belong here? The answer, as always, is no.

Hugo likes to set his stage with history, and I am surprised that he doesn’t just go back to the beginning of time. Any mention of a road, a building, a personage, leads to a back-in-time extravaganza with much eulogizing of everything from military tactics to the virtues and vices of Napoleon (long dead by the time this story starts, I might add.) It’s enervating and saps the joy of reading out of a narrative that is, in and of itself, unforgettable and unsurpassed. Just why, Hugo, why?

In the end, despite Hugo’s rants (oh, there are so, so many and they are soooo long)  Les Miserables is so amazing that it’s worth the trouble, even (if you can stand it) the non-abridged version. Ignore the asides and keep your eyes on Valjean, on Javert, on Cosette, and allow your heart and connection to prevail during the dry moments. Valjean is an unforgettable character. He will leave you in tears, but ultimately his story will change your life and perception, will make you kinder and more empathetic, will make you look at the why behind people’s circumstances instead of relying on knee-jerk judgment, and will make you accept (and hope to change) your complicity in the entire mess of society and despair.

– Frances Carden

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Book Review: Les Misérables

Jean Valjean has been in prison for 19 years. On the day he is freed, he walks to the city of Digne, which is over thirty miles away. Exhausted, he searches for food and shelter, but is rejected at each place he goes to because he was a former convict. Finally he is told to ask the Bishop of Digne for help. The Bishop agrees without hesitation. Valjean wakes up early in the morning and steals the Bishop's silverware. He is caught and brought back to the Bishop, but the Bishop saves Valjean from returning to prison by pretending that the silverware was actually a gift. He even gives Valjean silver candlesticks as well. The Bishop convinces Valjean to turn around his life.

Exceptionally strong character development was a highlight for me. Some themes in this classic are sacrifice for others and unexpected generosity; for example, Valjean has an opportunity to shoot his worst enemy, but instead decides to free him. The plot also weaves the connections between characters magnificently. This book has made me experience emotions more strongly than any other book I've read.

Les Miserables is a relatively long novel; Victor Hugo (the author) is willing to become verbose frequently. I actually enjoyed its details, which made me more immersed in the story. If you don't usually read books with philosophy, it may take a little getting used to. Even if you have already watched the play, the book is still worth considering; there is plenty of extra material in the book that the play skips.

Les Misérables

By victor hugo.

'Les Misérables' is a story of how everyday people can build a more just society through small acts of courage and hope despite difficult circumstances and the past.

Article written by Emma Baldwin

B.A. in English, B.F.A. in Fine Art, and B.A. in Art Histories from East Carolina University.

The novel is quite long, detailing the lives of various characters in France, many of whom play secondary roles. Primarily though, it follows the lives and struggles of Valjean, Cosette, Eponine, Fantine, and Marius as they deal with the politics of 19th-century France and their individual hopes and dreams.

Spoiler-Free Summary

‘ Les Misérables ‘ is an epic tale of courage and perseverance set in early 19th-century France. The story follows Jean Valjean, a prisoner recently released from prison after serving almost 20 years for stealing a small amount of bread. Valjean’s determination to lead a life of moral rectitude and become a model of justice is soon tested as the relentless pursuit of Javert, a ruthless police inspector, follows him through France.

During his travels, Valjean meets Fantine, a struggling factory worker, and a single mother desperate to provide for her daughter Cosette. Valjean helps Fantine as much as he can before she tragically dies. Valjean, Cosette, and a young man named Marius Pontmercy all soon find themselves in the midst of the Paris Uprising of 1832, an uprising driven by passionate citizens eager to throw off oppression.

The complex tale explores themes of mercy and justice , forgiveness, sacrifice, and morality. Valjean’s lifelong struggle to uphold the law while avoiding the persecution of Javert serves as the spine of the story.

Plot Summary of  Les Misérables

Spoiler alert: important details of the novel are revealed below.

In the first chapters of ‘ Les Misérables ,’   the reader is introduced to Jean Valjean, a prisoner who recently finished a 19-year sentence for stealing bread. He stays at the home of Bishop Myriel, hoping to start his life off on a new foot. But, out of desperation and poverty, Valjean steals the bishop’s silverware. Kindly, Myriel gifts Valjean the silver when he’s rearrested by police. Years pass, and Valjean becomes the mayor of a small town, Montreuil-sur-mer. 

Readers are also introduced to Fantine, a young woman who falls in love and gets pregnant. Her lover, Tholomyès, leaves her alone to contend with her pregnancy, birth, and later poverty. She knows that no one will hire her if they know she’s had a child out of wedlock, so she gives her baby, Cosette, to the Thénardiers to take care of. Fantine is later fired from her job after her coworkers find out about her child, and she has to start working as a prostitute. She’s about to be arrested when Valjean intervenes and sits at Fantine’s bedside while she dies. At the same time, the police inspector Javert catches up with him and arrests him.

Valjean soon escapes from prison and travels to Montfermeil in order to keep his promise to Fantine and find Cosette. The Thénardiers are revealed to be an incredibly cruel family who has done nothing to give Cosette a happy life. They have two daughters, one of whom, Eponine, plays an important role in the novel. 

Valjean takes Cosette to Paris, and Javert finds them, forcing them to flee. They spend time living in a convent afterward while Cosette goes to school. 

Readers then learn about Marius Pontmercy, a young man from a wealthy family. Marius decides to live a poor life as a law student and joins the Friends of the ABC, a revolutionary group led by Enjolras. When Marius sees Cosette in a park, he falls in love with her immediately. Eponiine, who’s been living nearby with her parents under assumed names, falls in love with Marius. But he’s still entirely dedicated to Cosette and her to him. Valjean disapproves and disappears with her, breaking Marius’ heart. 

Marius and his friends start a political uprising and attempt to fight for democracy behind a series of barricades. Javert has disguised himself among the troops, and they discover him. Eponine then sacrifices her life to save Marius’ and dies in his arms. 

Valjean, realizing that he’s wronged his daughter, decides to find Marius and ensure that nothing happens to him. He volunteers to execute Javert but decides to let him go. 

Valjean tries to flee with a very injured and unconscious Marius through the sewers, but Javert finds them and is torn between his duty and what he knows is right. He throws himself into the river, committing suicide, after letting Valjean go. 

Marius recovers from his injuries, and he and Cosette get married. Marius learns about Valjean’s past and tells Cosette, worried that he’s a bad influence on his new wife. Valjean, depressed and lonely, is near death. The novel ends with a reconciliation, and Valjean is able to die happily with his family around him after Marius learns that Valjean is the one who saved him.

What kind of novel is  Les Misérables ? 

‘ Les Misérables ‘ is an epic historical novel written by Victor Hugo . It tells the story of redemption and the human condition in 19th-century France, with characters ranging from criminals to saints . It has been adapted numerous times for the stage and screen, showcasing its enduring power.

What are Victor Hugo’s books known for? 

Victor Hugo is renowned for his richly descriptive stories , such as ‘ Les Misérables ‘ and ‘ The Hunchback of Notre Dame .’ His books are known for their unforgettable characters, captivating plot lines, and inspiring themes.

What is the style of Victor Hugo’s  Les Misérables ? 

Victor Hugo’s ‘ Les Misérables ‘ is a classic novel in the style of historical fiction, romanticism, and social commentary. He brilliantly uses the settings of nineteenth-century France to illustrate how the revolutionary and Napoleonic periods changed people’s lives .

Why is  Les Misérables  important? 

‘ Les Misérables ‘ is an important story of the power of hope and the enduring strength of the human spirit in the face of adversity. Its message of justice and redemption transcends time, showing us the power of grace, compassion, and second chances. 

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Emma Baldwin, a graduate of East Carolina University, has a deep-rooted passion for literature. She serves as a key contributor to the Book Analysis team with years of experience.

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Stray Thoughts

A home for the stray thoughts of an ordinary christian woman.

Book Review: Les Miserables

Yes, I finally finished it! All 1,400+ pages!

I’ve read a couple of different abridged versions of Les Miserables by Victor Hugo and made it my goal to read the unabridged version.

When he traveled into a new town, his help in saving someone’s life and the confusion and excitement around the event resulted in the town officials’ forgetting to ask him for his papers. He was hired on in a factory and devised a way to improve the factory’s production, leading to his promotion, eventually to the head of the factory, and further still to his being elected the mayor. He was known as a quiet but kind and and benevolent man, using much of his wealth to aid those in need.

Thus it would seem his life was set on a new course of usefulness and happiness, except…except…

Except for Javert, a former prison guard who became the new police inspector in Valjean’s town, who thinks he recognizes the mayor as an ex-convict who has broken his parole.

Intersecting Valjean’s story is that of Fantine, a young, naive girl who gave herself to a man who only wanted to use her as a diversion one summer, leaving her with child, Cosette. In that day a single woman with a child was a scandal, so Fantine found an innkeeper and his wife whom she paid to keep her child while she went to another town to look for work. She ended up in Valjean’s factory, where she was fired after it was discovered that she had a child. In the meantime, the innkeeper, Thenardier, made up stories about Cosette needing more clothes, needing medicine, becoming very ill, all in an effort to extort money from Fantine. Fantine, worried and desperate, sold her teeth, her hair, and eventually her body (which is handled discreetly, without explicitness, in the book and was viewed by Hugo as a form of slavery). She became gravely ill from neglect of her own care, and an altercation in the street brought her to the attention of Valjean. When he heard her story, he felt responsible for her situation since she was dismissed from his factory, and he paid her her care and promised to take care of her daughter. The Thenardiers resented Valjean’s rescue of Cosette and the subsequent loss of income.

The rest of the book details the pursuit of Valjean by Javert, and, at times, Thenardier, his care of Cosette, her growth into a young woman, her falling in love with Marius, much to the dismay of Valjean, who has never loved anyone else and is afraid of losing Cossette.

That is the basic plot, but there are so many more layers, subplots, and characters in Les Miserables . There are discussions of poverty, politics, French history. One of the major themes is the righteousness of the law, as represented by Javert, versus the righteousness of grace, represented by Valjean. While not a Christian book in itself (it portrays the innate goodness of man, whereas Scripture portrays the innate sinfulness of man , and it includes some strange philosophies, and its politics are much more socialistic than I am comfortable with), it does portray Christian themes of redemption, forgiveness, sacrifice, and selflessness, and Valjean does depend on God for salvation and strength.

I have mentioned here before that I had read a couple of different abridged versions and had wanted to read this unbridged version for a long time. Though normally I am a book purist, wanting a book to remain as untouched as possible, I can see now why this book is abridged. The sheer 1,463 page length of the book is not so much the problem as the frequent asides. It is rather like rush hour traffic in some places — very slow going interspersed by brief interludes of acceleration. It’s like a mini-series interrupted at the climactic moments by a documentary. Valjean’s escape with Cosette to a convent leads to a discussion of the history of convents in general, this convent in particular, whether convents are right or wrong. An incident at the end of the battle of Waterloo which has repercussions for two characters later in the book is preceded by a 57-page description and discussion of Waterloo. A student revolt at the barricades leads to a discussion of the differences between an insurrection and a riot and which, in the author’s opinion, is right and wrong. Valjean’s escape from the barricades with a wounded Marius through the sewers involves a detailed description of the history of sewers and the author’s suggestions for how they could be made better (and I never knew there were so many different synonyms for sewage). Hugo must have been an intensely curious man as well as a thinker and a philosopher, but the asides do get tiresome. Though at times I found myself interested in them in spite of myself, particularly the battle of Waterloo section, a few times I was tempted to skip through them, reminding myself that I wanted to read the unabridged version, not skim through it.

And I am glad that I read it. It did give me a fuller understanding of the story, and I particularly enjoyed learning more of Fantine’s early story than other versions included and more of Javert’s mental struggle that led to his actions at the end of his life.

There are moments of sheer beauty in the book, moments of identification with the very human struggle, such as Valjean’s dilemma when he learns another man has been arrested under his name. One of the most poignant moments iss when he returns home after Cossette’s wedding and pulls out the little clothes he had bought for her when he first rescued her, and weeps into them. One of my favorite sections is when Thenardier seeks to implicate Valjean to Marius, unwittingly clearing his name instead.

And for all of Hugo’s wordiness, there are moments of clever, succinct, descriptive phrasing: “For dowry, she had gold and pearls; but the gold was on her head and the pearls were in her mouth.” “A torn conscience leads to an unraveled life.” “There is a way of falling into error while on the road of truth. He had a sort of willful implicit faith that swallowed everything whole.” “Skepticism, that dry rot of the intellect.” “He suffered the strange pangs of a conscience suddenly operated on for a cataract’.” “This man…was…still bleeding from the lacerations of his destiny.”

Just a word about the musical based on the novel: it was through the musical that I first discovered this story. I was in the library video section one day, saw a video of the tenth anniversary production of the musical, and decided I’d check it out just to see what it was all about, having heard the title for years but knowing little of the story. I was absolutely enthralled. The music is gorgeous and the story so touching. But for the information of those whose standards are as conservative as mine or more so, there is a smattering of four-letter words, and the section dealing with Fantine’s prostitution is much more explicit than the book is. Unfortunately, though I’d love to see a stage production, I could not in good conscience because of that section. As it is we skip the “Lovely Ladies” song on the video and CD. I was delighted to discover, though, that the musical does go back to the original for many things, using even some exact lines from the book. It’s fairly faithful to the book except for the section mentioned, and the fact that Eponine and Marius’s relationship is not as it was in the book, and the scene of Valjean praying over Marius before the battle of the barricade and regarding him as a son was not on the book: at that point, even after rescuing Marius, Valjean hates him for the threat he is to taking Cosette away and is only caring for him for her happiness, though he does come to love him as a son much later. Plus Valjean doesn’t fight Javert after Fantine’s death before rescuing Cosette: he is arrested and escapes again later.

I’ll leave you with a couple of scenes from the musical. The first is the confrontation between Valjean and J avert after Fantine dies.

The second takes place after Valjean learns another man has been arrested in his name, and he struggles within himself as to what to do about it. The number 24601, which is mentioned in both songs, was Valjean’s number in prison.

(This review is linked to Semicolon’s Saturday Review of Books , Callapidder Day’s Spring Reading Thing 2009 Book Reviews , and 5 Minutes For Books Classic Bookclub Discussion of Les Miserables .)

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48 thoughts on “ book review: les miserables ”.

CONGRATULATIONS on getting through that!

I saw the musical first and then read the book. I’ve forgotten most of the musical now and am curious to see it again but, as you say, the issue of prostitution is more heavily emphasized.

One day I would like to go back and re-read the entire book. However, that’ll have to wait a little while!

I tried to read this years ago and just could not. Maybe I was too young and should try again. You made it sound interesting.

Thanks for the review, Barbara. Your description makes me lean toward not reading the unabridged version–I’m not sure I could get through the history of convents section or the 57-pages on the background of Waterloo. The story itself, however, sounds very good. I’ve always wanted to see the musical.

I’m just like Quilly! I tried to read it I think in high school – and it just wasn’t happening. I never picked it up again – and I’ve never seen the musical either. I should probably revisit this whole thing! Sounds like a great story!

Woo Hoo. You are the definition of stick-to-tiveness!

Wow, Barbara. Talk about perseverance – you certainly have it. My hats off to you! Thanks for the summary of the book. I have always heard of the book, but didn’t know what it’s really all about.

Good on you for finishing!!!! WOW!

Great review. Congrats on rising to the challenge.

I read this in high school, but I’m not sure whether it was the full text or an abridgement. Probably it was an abridgement. My youth pastor was always recommending books, and he recommended this one with great enthusiasm.

I picked up a used copy of ‘War and Peace’ and was going to read it, but then I discovered it was abridged. I know what you mean about being a purist, yet seeing why, sometimes, these monumental works are abridged. Sometimes I wonder if the author himself might pare it down if he had opportunity to revise it today!

You certainly have preservered. I know you’re happy its finished.

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Good review on a great book. I read it when I didn’t know there were abridged versions available! But, like you, I’m glad I made it through.

Such a good book, and a great musical opera. Like you, I love both. I even enjoyed some of the essays and asides; others I skimmed.

GREAT review, Barbara! Thanks for the videos too. I would love to get into this once I finish Dostoyevsky’s CRIME AND PUNISHMENT. LES MISERABLES is too good to be missed.

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Does anyone know what 24601 means? besides it was Jean ValJeans number? does it represent something?

I don’t think it represents anything, Emily.

Thank you for your review on Les Mis. I’ve never seen it and I can’t remember reading it in h.s. so when my two girls (14, 15) wanted to audition for the summer theater school edition of Les Mis I didn’t hesitate to say yes (it’s a classic after all). Then a friend mentioned the prostitution aspect so I asked the summer theater director how the school edition handles this and she said, “it’s still there … language and all.” She said she’d cast the older girls or girls who didn’t have a problem with it, but wasn’t sure how she’d do the choreography and costumes. So we are going to find something else to do this summer. Needless to say we are all very disappointed.

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Congrats on making it through. The 57-page description of Waterloo was my Waterloo for this book. I just couldn’t make it past that! Good for you for persevering!

Great review! I loved the book and have seen the play several times. I also have the music :>) Happy BTT!

Wow! That is a BIG accomplishment (pun intended 🙂 And, a great review! Here’s my BTT.

I love listening to the musical – my best friend in high school did his term paper on this and I remember it was huge. I now want to read it because I adore the overall story and would love to see more detail to it.

Les Miserables is one of my favourite books ever. Not always easy to get through, and my hardback copy weighed a ton even though it only ran to 900 pages, but definitely worth the effort.

I adore the show, too, but there’s so much more to the book that just can’t be squeezed into a couple of hours.

I enjoyed reading your review!

Les Miz is the very best book ever that I’ve read in my entire life (although I’ve lived only 15 years). I’ve first read it when I was 12, and then it led me to many different abridged versions of Les Miz.

I’ve seen Les Miz musical in London and Tokyo, but I’ve been longing to see it in Broadway. Now I know I can’t reach my dream, though.

It’s a great pleasure to share the great impression of Les Miz with others:)

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This was review was very interesting to read. I ama sophomore in high school and decided to read this for an English project. Overall it was an incredible novel but I couldn’t agree with you more about how there were some parts of the story that were difficult to get through. I remember trying to read the section on Waterloo and often found myself drifting off.

Thanks so much for linking me up to your review, Barbara. I hope I have enough perseverance to finish this one day!

I’m about to start reading the unabridged version of this book. Thanks so much for the review!

You’re very welcome! I hope you enjoy it!

I enjoyed reading your review!. Thanks so much for the review!

I’ve become obsessed with reading this book. Your review did it extreme justice. Thanks for keeping such a great blog 🙂

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Les Miserables is possibly the most remarkable work of fiction I have ever read. I have read it multiple times, including the full text and many different abridgments. I admit that despite it being my favorite book, I do not enjoy reading the entire original text each time. I am not a French scholar, a war historian, nor do I have any particular fascination with the French Revolution or Napoleon.

But I love this story. The first time I read an abridged version, I was shocked to see that Fantine was almost an afterthought; she was barely mentioned in the book. There were many glaring differences that I thought destroyed many of the characters, and thus the true power of this book. I have also read longer abridgments which include all the necessary portions, but still find it necessary to include vast descriptions of the sewers of Paris, and the Battle of Waterloo.

I finally decided to abridge the book myself. I only omitted those parts I found to be completely superfluous, unrelated to the narrative, or distracting from the flow of the story.

The original text contains over 540,000 words. My abridgment contains less than half that at under 254,000.

Here is the link: http://lesmiserablesabridged.blogspot.com/2012/12/les-miserables-abridged-part-1-fantine.html

ITS A GOOD IN FINISHING ‘FATASTIC

My son and I went to see the movie on Christmas day since hubby was working and daughter had gone out of town with cousins. I will probably do a review on my blog soon of both the positives and negatives of it. I don’t go to many movies, but this was an experience. The work itself is fantastic. I had heard of it, of course, but was not familiar with the plot.

I’d love to hear about the movie. We’ve been wanting to go but wary about how the scenes with Fantine were handled. The musical plays up aspects of that that the book does not. Hugo was realistic but discreet.

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Nice review! You’re right – the real thing is always better than versions and abridgements. I haven’t read any Hugo (’93 is on my “to read” pile for next year).

(I followed the link in your comment on lisanotes)

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Book Review

Les misérables.

• Victor Hugo
• Adventure , Christian Fiction , Historical

Readability Age Range

• Originally A. Lacroix, Verboeckhoven & Cie., and then many others such as Signet Classic in 1987

Year Published

This book has been reviewed by Focus on the Family’s marriage and parenting magazine .

Plot Summary

Monsieur Myriel is an unusual priest for this time period in France. He serves the poor and gives up nearly all income and pleasures in life. The exception is a set of silverware.

Jean Valjean is a convict recently released from prison after 19 years. The crimes leading to his imprisonment: stealing a loaf of bread and then trying to escape. He travels to the town of Digne, and as the law requires, must show his papers. Because of his past crimes, the inns refuse to serve him. No individuals will let him into their homes, despite his ability to pay. Monsieur Myriel welcomes him into his home.

Jean Valjean does not know how to react to kindness. He has met nothing but harsh treatment in his life. He steals the silverware.

Monsieur Myriel does not call the police, but Jean Valjean is arrested. The police bring Jean Valjean to Monsieur Myriel. The priest lies for the thief, but reminds him that the silverware comes at a price, and now Jean Valjean must live for good.

Jean Valjean spends time in the country, bewildered, warring within himself. The battle is for his soul. He comes across a chimney sweep and steals the boy’s coin in this confused, torn state. Eventually Jean Valjean decides to be a force for good. He travels to Montreuil-sur-mer, where he keeps his true identity a secret. He takes on the name Monsieur Madeleine and uses the money from the silverware to start a factory. It improves the economy of the entire area. He gives most of his wealth away, stresses honesty among his workers and is so beloved the town forces him to take the position of mayor though he doesn’t want it. In the meantime, a young girl named Fantine is traveling to Montreuil-sur-mer.

Fantine is coming from Paris. She has an illegitimate daughter, Cossette. The father has abandoned them. She is from Montreuil-sur-mer, though she has no family. She meets some innkeepers, the Thénardiers, and leaves her daughter with them to raise. She is afraid the people of Montreuil-sur-mer will shun her if it becomes known that her daughter is illegitimate.

Fantine gets a job at one of Madeleine’s factories. She is happy for a time, but her overseer at the factory finds out Fantine has an illegitimate child and crusades to get her fired.

Fantine falls into a wretched state of poverty. The Thénardiers invent lies of Cossette falling ill and needing medicine to squeeze more money out of her. She cuts her hair, has her teeth pulled and eventually turns to prostitution in the hopes of keeping Cossette safe and happy. Cossette in the meantime grows up an unloved child.

Fantine is arrested for ruining a gentlemen’s hat. Inspector Javert witnesses the mild assault and hauls her in for questioning. Fantine pleads her case, telling him how the gentleman she assaulted threw snow down her back and mocked her. She begs for mercy and tells her tragic tale in its entirety. The inspector sentences her to six months in prison.

While Fantine is telling her story, Madeleine slips in unnoticed. When Fantine sees him, she spits in his face, since she thinks he is responsible for firing her. Madeleine makes the inspector set her free, takes her to the hospital, pays her debts and makes arrangements for Cossette to visit her mother.

Inspector Javert is angry and writes to Prefecture of Police at Paris that Madeleine is really Jean Valjean, but the Prefecture writes back that they have Jean Valjean in custody, and he will be executed for his crimes. Inspector Javert confesses this to Madeleine. The inspector wants to be dismissed for his mistake. Madeleine is torn once again, but ultimately confesses who he is and saves the wrongly condemned man.

Inspector Javert arrests Jean Valjean when Fantine is on her deathbed, shocking her into the grave. Jean Valjean escapes Javert, but is recaptured and sent back to Toulan. He escapes once again by faking his own death in the sea. He finds the Thénardiers and rescues Cossette.

Inspector Javert tracks the two to Paris. They avoid being captured through a connection from Jean Valjean’s past. Fauchelevent is a man who Jean Valjean saved when he was the mayor. Fauchelevent is a gardener at a convent. Cossette and Jean Valjean find a new, peaceful life for a time in the convent. Cossette becomes a student, and Jean Valjean the gardener’s assistant.

Jean Valjean and Cossette eventually leave the convent and live in Paris again. Cossette falls in love with a young man named Marius. Marius has left home because of a rift with his grandfather over political and family complications. Because of this rift and Marius’ inability to support Cossette, he cannot marry her.

The political situation deteriorates in Paris, and the city experiences a violent uprising. Barricades are erected all over the city. Marius joins the fight out of despair. Jean Valjean joins the fight to watch over Marius, though part of him wishes Marius to be out of Cossette’s life forever.

Jean Valjean is given the opportunity to execute Javert, but he spares his life. Later in the conflict, Javert allows Jean Valjean to go free. Javert cannot forgive himself for not following the law and commits suicide rather than believe Jean Valjean is a truly good man.

Jean Valjean saves Marius’ life, though Marius does not know who saves him. After Marius heals, he again pursues Cossette for marriage. His grandfather relents, and the two are wed, but Marius is unforgiving of Jean Valjean’s past and drives a rift between Jean Valjean and Cossette.

Thénardier visits Marius in an attempt to swindle money and get Jean Valjean arrested. However Marius learns from him that it was Jean Valjean who saved Marius during the fighting in Paris. Marius and Cossette find Jean Valjean to ask forgiveness, and he is on his deathbed. He dies happy and forgiven.

Christian Beliefs

In 1862 France, the Catholic Church holds political power. The higher an individual rises in the church hierarchy, the more access he has to wealth and prosperity. Hugo paints the established church as corrupt and hypocritical, though he also shows that some priests love God and serve the poor.

Many of the characters believe in God, the Devil, sin and redemption and are concerned with good and evil.

Other Belief Systems

Inspector Javert believes that one is justified by the law, but when Jean Valjean saves him and he lets the man escape, Javert can find no relief for having broken the law.

Authority Roles

Many religious leaders are corrupt and only concerned about riches. A few live out their Christian ideals by serving the poor. Monsieur Myriel’s life extols the teachings of Jesus and helps transform Jean Valjean’s life because of his kindness toward the man.

A policeman, Inspector Javert, is obsessed with the law. He follows it to the letter, unrelenting in his pursuit for justice. Jean Valjean ultimately proves to be a virtuous father to Cossette, a protector of those she loves and a man redeemed.

Profanity & Violence

Though there is an insurrection in Paris and fighting at the barricades, the descriptions are not gory, though characters die. Inspector Javert kills himself.

Sexual Content

Fantine has a child out of wedlock, several characters are kissed and several references are made to working girls and prostitution. None of the descriptions are explicit.

Discussion Topics

Get free discussion questions for this book and others, at FocusOnTheFamily.com/discuss-books .

Additional Comments

You can request a review of a title you can’t find at [email protected] .

Book reviews cover the content, themes and worldviews of fiction books, not their literary merit, and equip parents to decide whether a book is appropriate for their children. The inclusion of a book’s review does not constitute an endorsement by Focus on the Family.

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What is Les Misérables about?

• What is Victor Hugo remembered for?

Les Misérables

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• Internet Archive - "Les miserables"
• The Guardian - The Novel of the Century: The Extraordinary Adventure of Les Misérables – review
• Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute - Les Misérables
• Academia - Hugo's Les Misérables: A Master Piece of World Literature
• CORE - Figurative Language found in Victor Hugo's Les Miserable Novel: A Semantics Approach

Les Misérables centres on the character Jean Valjean , an ex-convict in 19th-century France. The story spans many years as it tells of Valjean’s release from prison and reformation as an industrialist while being constantly pursued by the morally strict inspector Javert. During this time he encounters a plethora of characters in Paris such as Fantine, a single mother who works as a prostitute to provide for her daughter, and Marius, a student and revolutionary who falls in love with Valjean’s adopted daughter, Cosette.

What are the themes in Les Misérables ?

The themes of Les Misérables are concerned with social issues in 19th-century urban France. Victor Hugo uses Les Misérables to deliver critiques of wealth distribution , the justice system, industrialism, and republicanism.

Where is Les Misérables set?

Les Misérables is set in multiple locations in Paris and Montreuil-sur-Mer, often featuring places populated by the impoverished and downtrodden. Like some other notable authors of the era, such as Honoré de Balzac and Stendhal , Victor Hugo employs realist elements to tackle complex issues in urban French society.

Was Les Misérables adapted into a musical?

Les Misérables was adapted into a musical in 1980 by Alain Boublil, who wrote the book and the lyrics, and Claude-Michel Schönberg, who wrote the music. It won Best Musical at the 1987 Tony Awards and is considered one of the best musicals of all time.

Les Misérables , novel by Victor Hugo , published in French in 1862. It was an instant popular success and was quickly translated into several languages.

Set in the Parisian underworld and plotted like a detective story, the work follows the fortunes of the convict Jean Valjean , a victim of society who has been imprisoned for 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread. A hardened and streetwise criminal upon his release, he eventually softens and reforms, becoming a successful industrialist and mayor of a northern town. Despite this, he is haunted by an impulsive, regretted former crime and is pursued relentlessly by the police inspector Javert. Valjean eventually gives himself up for the sake of his adopted daughter, Cosette, and her husband, Marius.

Les Misérables presents a vast panorama of Parisian society and its underworld, and it contains many famous episodes and passages, among them a chapter on the Battle of Waterloo and the description of Valjean’s rescue of Marius by means of a flight through the sewers of Paris . A popular musical stage adaptation was produced in 1980.

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Arts & culture.

The art and life of Mark di Suvero

Les Misérables was born of one of the riskiest—and shrewdest—deals in publishing history.

An 1878 caricature of Hugo from La Petite Lune .

Earlier this month, Penguin Random House bid more than sixty-five million dollars  for the global rights to books by Barack and Michelle Obama, breaking the record for U.S. presidential memoirs. Despite the stratospheric price tag and the international headlines, the transaction lacked a certain excitement—it was a fantastic deal, but without frisson. After all, a behemoth publisher signing an iconic political couple, brokered by a top litigation firm … it’s merely another example of the establishment in lockstep.

Compare this cozy corporate pact—one that epitomizes big publishing today—with the romance and risk associated with another record-shattering deal widely regarded as the publishing coup of all time. Signed in 1861 on a sunny Atlantic island, it tied an exiled French genius to an upstart Belgian house, resulting in the printing of that perennial masterwork, Les Misérables . In a new book, The Novel of the Century: The Extraordinary Adventure of ‘Les Misérables’ , the professor and translator David Bellos condenses tranches of research into a gripping tale about Victor Hugo’s masterpiece. 

The deal, Bellos points out, was pathbreaking on several levels. First, Hugo earned an unprecedented sum: 300,000 francs (roughly $3.8 million in today’s money) for an eight-year license. “It was a tremendous amount of money, and since it entitled the publisher to own the work for only eight years, it remains the highest figure ever paid for a work of literature,” Bellos writes: “In terms of gold it would have weighed around ninety-seven kilos [213 pounds]. It was enough money to build a small railway or endow a chair at the Sorbonne.”

Second, the neophyte Belgian publisher Albert Lacroix was the antithesis of a Penguin Random House. At the time, the twenty-eight-year-old Lacroix had cut his teeth at his uncle’s printing press, and he didn’t have so much as a sou to his name. Determined to sign Hugo on, he set up his own firm—Lacroix, Verboeckhoven & Co—and borrowed the entire amount for Hugo’s advance from the Oppenheim bank in Brussels, where he had contacts. Bellos marks it as “probably the first loan ever made by a bank to finance a book,” which means “ Les Misérables stands at the vanguard of the use of venture capital to fund the arts.”

Third, Lacroix signed on knowing full well that his client was a political outcast: in 1851, his trenchant criticism of the dictatorial Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte met with such opprobrium that he fled France in a top hat and false beard, settling on Guernsey—a tiny British outpost off the Normandy coast. Louis-Napoléon, could have, if he so chose, impounded the book in France, thus ruining Lacroix for life. And yet, infected by what we might call the audacity of hope, the “carrot-haired” publisher swaggered on.

Les Misérables was published in 1862, but Hugo had started writing his fifteen-hundred-page “monster” seventeen years earlier, in 1845. Forced to abandon it by his political misfortune, he left the fledgling manuscript, which was almost destroyed by rioters, with his devoted mistress, who ushered it to safety. From there, Hugo wrote the bulk of the novel on Guernsey, only traveling to Belgium for the last pages, which he wrote in a hotel room overlooking the battlefield of Waterloo.

By 1861, the publishing grapevine had begun to drip with the news that the exiled French poet had a big novel to sell. Naturally, there was plenty of interest. Hugo had inherited Goethe’s mantle of Europe’s preeminent literary seer, and he was a proven crowd-pleaser, with the blockbuster Notre Dame de Paris under his belt. But there was also unease at the dangling guillotine of censorship. Nevertheless, when Hugo was offered a handsome 150,000 francs by an established publisher-friend, he declined. How much did he want? It was quite simple, writes Bellos: “He wanted more than had ever been paid for a book.”

Enter the “small, slim, agitated” Lacroix, a zealous Hugophile and hard-nosed businessman with a seemingly bottomless appetite for risk. After securing the Oppenheim bank loan, he bypassed Hugo’s agent and wrote directly and sycophantically to his hero, making it clear that if the Master accepted his price, he would pay in cash, up front. When Hugo indicated interest, Lacroix sailed to Guernsey, where he got immediately down to brass tacks. “His conversational style,” quips Bellos, “seemed modeled on the charge of the Light Brigade.” Negotiations were wrapped up in a day. On October 4, 1861, the two men signed their historic deal.

The in toto amount of 300,000 francs that Lacroix agreed to pay in cash included 50,000 francs for translation rights—a new concept in publishing at the time. Lacroix had bought the novel sight unseen, itself something of a rarity; more nail-bitingly still, Hugo had refused to reveal its length. He did, however, assuage Lacroix’s fears by emphasizing that the novel was “a social drama,” not a political work.

Hugo insisted on a cheap edition (apart from the usual fancy one) for the ordinary public. The recent arrival of the steam-powered steel press, coupled with increasingly inexpensive paper, made this possible when it may not have been in previous years. Even more crucially, as Bellos explains, the problem of rampant piracy was addressed by the first international copyright treaty: Signed in 1852 by France and Belgium, it put an end to the trade in pirated editions of French books, extending French copyright to Belgium and Belgium copyright to France. It also protected Belgian publishers from French censorship. Brussels, therefore, was the safest place to publish a Hugo novel. But knowing that France was the primary market, Lacroix cannily sublet to a French publisher, thus cutting himself off from any potential censorship losses.

Lacroix returned to Brussels with the contract in his pocket and a strut in his step. But the next six months turned out to be sheer hell. The harried publisher had to juggle typesetters, bankers, translators, lawyers, and, back in Guernsey, a querulous divo who railed against every incorrect comma change. Every proof had to be dispatched to Hugo and sent back through squalls and rainstorms, leading to anxiety and delay. Lacroix begged Hugo to move temporarily to Brussels; he refused. Through the logistical nightmare, however, both men worked with Javertian fervor to meet the April deadline—Hugo scratching furiously at the proofs with his goose quill, and Lacroix cracking the whip to keep the press clacking. “It was the greatest rush job his profession would ever know,” writes Bellos.

Next came the gargantuan publicity campaign—designed to unleash such excitement that even an emperor with an axe to grind would think twice about depriving the masses of the sensational treat promised them. Press releases were distributed six months in advance, and the walls of Paris plastered with illustrations of Jean Valjean, Fantine, Cossette, Marius, and other characters from the novel. In a break with tradition, no advance review copies were sent out. The text was as fiercely embargoed as a Harry Potter novel—probably, Bellos says, “the first work ever launched under embargo.”

On the morning of April 4, 1862, part 1 of Les Misérables , called “Fantine,” was released simultaneously in Brussels, Paris, Saint Petersburg, London, Leipzig, and several other European cities. No book had ever had an international launch on this scale. Within a day, the first Paris printing of six thousand copies sold out to the avid queues that snaked around the bookstores. The critics and literati panned it brutally: Alexandre Dumas, inspired no doubt by Jean Valjean’s sojourn through the sewers, sneered that reading the novel was akin to “wading through mud.” Gustave Flaubert privately mocked it as a “book written for catholico-socialist shitheads and for the philosophico-evangelical ratpack.”

But the people absolutely loved it. When forty-eight thousand copies of the “Cossette” and “Marius” volumes went on sale a month later, “Hugonic fandom” had reached such a fever pitch that shoppers in Paris arrived with handcarts and wheelbarrows to whisk away as many copies as possible. A peeved Flaubert delayed publishing Salammbô by six months: the catholico-socialist shithead novel was monopolizing sales.

Within a matter of months, a triumphant Lacroix had paid off his loan. His tenuous bond with Hugo had produced a moral and commercial juggernaut, a piece of intellectual property that would launch both social reform as well as a plethora of movies, musicals and video games. But perhaps inevitably, Lacroix tired of worshipping at “dear Master’s” feet, and the two men fell out.

“It was a hugely daring deal,” Bellos told me on the phone. “Lacroix has to be congratulated on pulling it off single-handedly, outside the usual routines of publishing conglomerates. The Obama deal for two books is impressive, but it runs for the length of copyright, which could easily exceed a hundred years—it runs for the authors’ lifetimes plus seventy years. And there’s no risk either book will be banned. Even if the Obamas decide to live on an island in the middle of the ocean, they won’t have to have their text copied out by hand and physically transported by two boats, three trains, and a horse-drawn carriage to get it to their publisher.”

Nina Martyris is a freelance journalist who writes on books.

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Table of Contents

About the book, about the author.

Victor Hugo (1802-1885), novelist, poet, and dramatist, is one of the most important of French Romantic writers. Among his best-known works are The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831) and Les Miserables (1862).

Product Details

• Publisher: Canterbury Classics (February 11, 2025)
• Length: 1272 pages
• ISBN13: 9781667209739

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• Fiction > Classics

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LES MISÉRABLES

by Victor Hugo ; adapted by Marcia Williams ; illustrated by Marcia Williams ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 24, 2015

An epic muddle, all in all.

In typically buoyant cartoons, Williams presents a précis of Hugo’s epic.

It’s hard to imagine an illustrator less suited to this exhausting story and vice versa. In sequential panels large and small, Valjean and the other characters appear in picturesquely patched and rumpled costume. The background slums, sewers and, in later scenes, barricades are atmospherically stained and littered with detritus, but even during the most desperate and tragic events there are smiles and stage antics on view. Small birds, busy rats and cats, sprigs of garland and like decorative motifs add entertaining distractions within the pictures and along the borders of every page. Furthermore, even if portions of the dialogue enclosed in the speech balloons are credibly translated from the original, some of them have a jarringly jocular ring: “Since I am not arrested and I have things to do, I’m going”; “The old geezer and his daughter are on their way.” In contrast to the lively, fluidly drawn watercolors, the lines or blocks of narrative running beneath every picture offer a dry, past-tense plot summary that may possibly be helpful to assignment-driven slackers but go on long enough to try the interest of younger readers.

Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-7636-7476-2

Page Count: 64

Publisher: Candlewick

Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014

CHILDREN'S HISTORICAL FICTION

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More by Victor Hugo

BOOK REVIEW

by Victor Hugo & adapted by Tim Wynne-Jones & illustrated by Bill Slavin

THE PAPER COWBOY

by Kristin Levine ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 4, 2014

A winningly authentic, realistic and heartwarming family drama.

A family crisis pushes a 12-year-old wannabe cowboy living outside Chicago in 1953 to resort to bullying and damaging pranks.

Since his baby sister’s birth, Tommy’s normally moody mother’s been like a “sky full of dark clouds.” When his older sister’s seriously burned, Tommy’s left to cope with her daily newspaper route, his increasingly abusive mother, his overwhelmed father and his younger sisters. Tommy reacts by bullying classmates, especially a shy, overweight new boy at school named Sam. When he’s caught stealing from Sam’s father’s store, Tommy retaliates by planting a copy of a communist newspaper found during a community paper drive in the store. After the owner’s accused of being a communist and the store’s boycotted, Tommy realizes he’s acting like an outlaw instead of a cowboy, and he tries to find the real communist in the neighborhood, leading to surprising discoveries and the help his family desperately needs. Speaking in the first person, Tommy reveals himself as a good-hearted, responsible kid who’s temporarily lost his moral compass. Effective use of cowboy imagery allows Tommy to step up like his hero, Gary Cooper in High Noon , and do the right thing. Period detail and historical references effectively capture the anti-communist paranoia of the McCarthy era.

Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2014

ISBN: 978-0-399-16328-9

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Putnam

Review Posted Online: July 28, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014

CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S HISTORICAL FICTION

More by Kristin Levine

by Kristin Levine

GOLD RUSH GIRL

by Avi ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2020

A splendidly exciting and accessible historical adventure.

Tory encounters the independence and adventure she longs for in the untamed city of San Francisco in 1849.

Thirteen-year-old narrator Victoria Blaisdell, known to her family as Tory, lives a comfortably privileged life in mid-19th-century Providence, Rhode Island. She is frustrated and constrained by the influence of her maternal aunt, Lavinia, who believes that girls are to take care of boys and should be educated only at home. But when Tory’s father loses his position and wages and decides to seek gold in California, Tory stows away on the ship that will take him and her fretful younger brother, Jacob, on the seven-month journey to San Francisco. There, Tory finds work to keep herself and Jacob going while their father heads off to the gold fields. When Jacob is kidnapped to be a cabin boy for a ship heading out of the Golden Gate, Tory must appeal to her new friend Thad from Maine and to Sam, a wary young black man from Sag Harbor, New York, to help her navigate an underworld of gambling, rogues, and abandoned ships. Sam and Señor Rosales, who runs the cafe near Tory and Jacob’s tent, are the only nonwhite principal characters. Tory is the only girl. Avi evokes Gold Rush–era San Francisco through Tory’s eyes with empathy and clarity while keeping the action lively.

Pub Date: March 10, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-5362-0679-1

Page Count: 320

Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020

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When the Culture Wars Came for the Theater

A new book sees the reactionary response to a New Deal–era arts initiative as a precursor to today’s cultural divisions.

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From our current vantage point it may be hard to believe this, but during the worst economic crisis the United States has ever seen, the government decided to spend more than half a billion of today’s dollars to support the arts. Federal Project Number One, an offshoot of the Works Progress Administration, was a New Deal program that employed artists to make meaningful work all over the nation. One of its initiatives, the small but mighty Federal Theatre Project, accomplished something remarkable: From 1935 to 1939, it created a truly national theater with a distinctly American character, and revitalized an industry that was losing a war with the movies for both audience numbers and cultural impact. Unlike the state theaters of continental Europe, which were largely based in capital cities and set an artistic standard for their country, the FTP opened shows simultaneously across the nation, with scripts lightly tailored to their region, making theater relevant to everyone.

The Federal Theatre Project is best remembered for launching the career of Orson Welles, inventing a new documentary-theater form called the Living Newspaper , and investing in Black art through its Negro Units—as well as for its ignominious downfall. In 1939, Representative Martin Dies and the House Un-American Activities Committee accused the program of being a Communist front and of producing New Deal propaganda. These accusations were difficult for the FTP and its director, Hallie Flanagan, to fight, both because the project lacked public support from the WPA and because some of the claims were at least partly true. Only four years after its launch, the FTP’s budget was eliminated by Congress, and it shut down.

Theater folk love a romantic lost cause, as anyone who has seen Les Misérables can attest, so it’s hard to spend time in the industry and not become enamored of the FTP. The latest to do so is the renowned scholar James Shapiro, author of Shakespeare in a Divided America and the brilliant The Year of Lear . His new book, The Playbook: A Story of Theater, Democracy, and the Making of a Culture War , documents the rise of both the Federal Theatre Project and its antagonist Martin Dies, along with the death of the former at the hands of the latter.  Shapiro sees this collision of American art, the federal government, and the reactionary right as a precursor to and source of our present culture wars, in which Communist has been replaced with woke and certain right-wingers seek to use the power of the state to control the books we read and the culture we produce. While these two eras have things in common, the search for parallels puts a presentist filter over the story of the FTP that is ultimately the book's undoing.

Throughout, Shapiro depicts the history of the FTP as a battle between titanic, eternal forces. In one corner is Dies, portrayed as the Reactionary With a Thousand Faces, the man who “begat Senator Joseph McCarthy, who begat Roy Cohn, who begat Donald Trump, who begat the horned ‘QAnon Shaman.’” Fighting against these forces are the Federal Theater Project and Flanagan. Together, they represent the noble art of theater, which has “always been about social conflict and questioning the status quo.” This clash “would have a lasting impact on American cultural life, and, inevitably, on the resilience of the nation’s democracy,” Shapiro asserts, “for the health of democracy and theater, twin-born in Ancient Greece, has always been mutually dependent.”

Although theater was born at roughly the same time and place as democracy, Shapiro is mistaking correlation for causation. It’s particularly odd for a Shakespeare scholar of Shapiro’s immense gifts and knowledge to assert that democracy and theater go hand in hand. Shakespeare and his brilliant colleagues in London’s theater scene lived and worked during the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James. Both of these rulers were many things, but enthusiasts for democracy they were not. Playwrights of this era wrote under an official censorship regime, and one of the early traveling companies during Elizabeth’s reign was run by her spymaster. The model of tragedy they worked from was based on the works of the Roman writer and Stoic philosopher Seneca the Younger, who was the tutor, and later adviser, of Emperor Nero. Some of Russia’s greatest dramatists wrote within an even more extreme censorship system under the czars. America’s own theatrical golden age, which began in the late 1940s, did take place during a time of progressive democratic gains, but it was also a period when Jim Crow laws and white-supremacist terrorism effectively shut Black Americans out of democratic participation in large swaths of the country.

Read: The man who transformed American theater

Dissident art creates a vital outlet for the democratic spirit, but when it comes to the mainstream, the arts’ most durable relationship is not with democracy but with nationalism. Theater has long been a way for societies to declare their greatness and define their national character; investment in theater has often coincided with countries’ emergence onto the world stage. Domestic theater grew dramatically in sophistication and popularity in Russia after the defeat of Napoleon in 1812, in England under Elizabeth I, in Spain during the rise of its empire in the 16th century, and in the United States after it became one of the world’s two superpowers at the end of World War II. When federal arts funding was resurrected in the U.S. more than a decade after the FTP’s death, it was in part so that artistic work could showcase the superiority of America to the Soviet Union.

This funding took two forms, one covert and one official. As the journalist and historian Frances Stonor Saunders documented in The Cultural Cold War , the CIA secretly steered funding and career opportunities to American artists and writers via various front groups, such as the Congress for Cultural Freedom. These groups sponsored musical events, including concerts presenting orchestral works that had been censored in Eastern Europe and tours featuring Louis Armstrong. In the literary world, it supported The Paris Review (co-founded by the CIA employee Peter Matthiessen); influenced PEN International, the literary free-speech organization, to pursue American interests; and had a hand in the publishing of at least a thousand books. The Congress for Cultural Freedom also helped the Museum of Modern Art mount multiple shows of abstract expressionists and New York School painters in Europe. Ironically, these same artists were simultaneously being denounced in the Capitol. The iconoclasm that made them such great representatives of America’s individualist genius also made them dangerous nonconformists and suspected Communists.

More overtly, in the 1960s Congress created the National Endowment for the Arts. Its founding legislation is explicitly nationalistic in tone. “The world leadership which has come to the United States,” Congress declared , “cannot rest solely upon superior power, wealth, and technology, but must be solidly founded upon worldwide respect and admiration for the Nation's high qualities as a leader in the realm of ideas and of the spirit.” Partly as a way of differentiating the NEA from the Soviet model, the endowment established a peer-review panel for selecting grantees that was meant to shield recipients from political interference.

This system of independence lasted until the early 1990s, when modern heirs to Martin Dies, such as Senator Jesse Helms, worked to break the NEA’s spine, killing its most innovative programs, doing away with almost all of its grants to individual artists, drastically cutting its funding, and inserting decency language into its funding guidelines. (The peer-review system is still in place today, but it no longer supports individual artists other than writers and translators, and as Michael Brenson writes in his book Visionaries and Outcasts , the work the NEA backs now is far more conservative and populist than what came before.) It’s not a coincidence that the crushing of the endowment occurred immediately after the fall of the Soviet Union; with its major rival vanquished, the U.S. government didn’t need the arts to advertise the greatness of the American way of life anymore. Lacking a nationalistic purpose, many arts advocates have struggled to make a compelling case for arts funding.

One argument frequently floated is that the arts are fundamentally virtuous, and make us better people. There are many versions of this claim, from music assisting with the development of math skills, to fiction's ability to expand our empathy, to Shapiro's assertion that theater is good for democracy. The arts can aid in enriching our democracy; they can make us more alive, more human, less lonely, and wiser. But they will never do so if we simply assume that they’re good for us by the mere fact of their existence. The arts deserve appreciation and funding even when they may not be good for us. Art is where we go to express the fullness of ourselves, including the parts that are broken, and to bear witness to the fullness of the other. Art reflects the dreamworld of the self, and our dreams are not always virtuous, nor are they under our control. But it is precisely this complexity that makes the arts necessary.

Read: Why activism leads to so much bad writing

In reducing the Federal Theatre Project’s story to a parable for the present day, The Playbook misses an opportunity to mine that complexity. The FTP produced more than a thousand shows, ranging from boulevard comedy to experimental dance. It operated all over the country and employed hundreds of people. Yet The Playbook focuses only on a small handful of shows in chapters that fail to connect to one another, or give the overarching story of the FTP its due. The resulting book is a number of exegeses of specific productions bookended by a couple of chapters about the House Un-American Activities Committee, rather than a coherent story. Some of the specific productions Shapiro chooses to highlight—which include an all-white dance performance set to Black protest music and a satire on racism by two Black men that the FTP insisted be rewritten so as not to offend white viewers—also make a poor case for theater as a bastion of democracy.

The primary purpose of history is not to find lessons for our time, but to understand the past. Sifting through the complex record of the Federal Theatre Project and the Dies Committee to find contemporary resonance risks covering up as much as is reveals. What makes Hallie Flanagan’s stewardship of the FTP so inspiring is that she never took the virtue or relevance of theater for granted. Flanagan and her colleagues made theater an important expression of the American democratic experiment through force of will, passion, and ingenuity. And although, yes, that experiment was destroyed through a mix of reactionary perfidy and liberal wimpiness, the meaning of its story is not solely contained in its ending. The life of the Federal Theatre Project—filled, as the democratic project itself is, with triumphs and failures, arguments and coalitions, power, rage, love, and pain—is suffused with complicated, contradictory meaning, all on its own.

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Vertical Acquires Conor Soucy’s Horror Film ‘Dead Whisper’ and Sets Release Date (EXCLUSIVE)

By Lexi Carson

Lexi Carson

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Vertical has acquired Conor Soucy ‘s directorial debut “ Dead Whisper ” and will debut it in select theaters on July 5, and on AppleTV and Prime Video, beginning July 9.

The horror/thriller film “Dead Whisper” stars Samuel Dunning (“Tim Travers and the Time Travelers Paradox”) and marks the first on-screen role for Rob Evan, whose previous credits include Broadway’s “Les Misérables,” and “Jekyll & Hyde.” The rest of the cast’s ensemble includes Tana Sirois, Samantha Hill, Codey Gillum, Chris Goodwin, Dhane Ross, Hester Wilkinson and Bruce Winant.

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“Our collaboration with Vertical will bring ‘Dead Whisper’ to a wide audience that appreciates a good throwback horror experience,” Soucy said.

Vertical, which was founded in 2012 by producers Rich Goldberg and Mitch Budin has become a leading global independent distributor releasing films across all mediums. Past Vertical releases include “She Came to Me,” which was directed by Rebecca Miller and starring Peter Dinklage, Marisa Tomei and Anne Hathaway, and the 2023 Independent Spirit Award winner “Emily the Criminal,” starring Aubrey Plaza and written and directed by John Patton Ford.

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