Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

 Les Misérables

by Victor Hugo

Hey :) Here I am again with another review. This time it will be about this big big book, a masterpiece of French Literature. 

Check out my last review about the Outsider by Stephen King :)

---

Today's book will be Les Misérables (The Miserables) by the French author Victor Hugo. 

---

The book is a historical novel divided in 5 volumes, each of them focusing on different main characters. 

Their destinies will then interlace together through the whole book. 

The first volume sees a poor young woman as the main character. Her name is Fantine and she's in love with a young man named Félix that soon abandon here though, leaving her alone and pregnant of a baby girl, Cosette. Being now not alone anymore but having to take care of another being, Fantine does everything in her power to take care of her child. She doesn't have a place where she can stay, so she has to leave her kid with some innkeepers, the Thénadiers. These awful individuals though, they will take advantage of the poor good young woman and ask always for more money, faking Cosette to be sick. This will lead Fantine to the fastest way of making money: prostituting herself and selling her hair and teeth. 

The second volume sees as the main protagonist, Fantine's daughter, Cosette and how her life is going on at the Inn. The kid will be treated poorly and bad, in comparison with the other daughters of the innkeepers, and she will be "used" as the servant of the house. Things will change for her, when her path will cross with another protagonist of this story, the ex convict, Jean Valjean, which, at the end, is really the main protagonist of the whole book. 

The third volume instead focuses on the story of Marius, a French noble man, that moved away from his family, especially his grandfather, because of his ideas. Together with a group of friends and fighters, lead by the charismatic Enjolras, they will make a revolution, trying bringing freedom to the country. His path will cross with the one of Cosette, now grown up into a beautiful young lady that is leaving with "her father" Jean Valjean. 

The fourth volume talks about the barricade and the intromission inside it from one of the characters, Javert, the police man hunting down Jean. The fighters will soon realise though, that he's a spy working for the government. The battle at the barricade becomes more vivid, leading to the death of one of the characters involving Marius life. 

The last volume which concludes the book sees the last days of Jean Valjean, now an old man that has fulfilled his life by making Cosette grew into the woman she is now, making her happy and with a safe future in front of her. 

---

Examining the nature of law and grace, the novel talks about the history of France, its architecture of Paris, the moral philosophy and the injustice of those times, religion, romanticism, and familial love.

Les Misérables became really popular through the years in TV and theatres too thanks to film, tv series and even a Broadway musical that then got turned into a film itself of 2012 with Hugh Jackman as Jean. 

What can I say about it? It took me 8 months to finish it because it's a really big book. 1.460 pages to be precise, but I loved it. Loved it with all myself. It was exactly as the film cited above. So full of happiness, sadness, love, war, everything you could ask for in a book.