Book of the Week: Les Miserables

Les Miserables is more like a book of the month.  I really am a pretty fast reader.  Most books I finish within a week, and many within 2-3 days.  I read Mockingjay in one day, and I didn't even neglect my children that day. This book is so long that it took me from March 18 to April 20 to finish it.  I have learned from the trusty (hehe) wikipedia that Les Miserables actually makes in onto the list of longest books ever written, at approximately 1321 pages and 464,450 words.  
Whew.  

Title: Les Miserables (unabridged)
Author: Victor Hugo
Published: 1862
Short Synopsis: Well, to make a very long story short, it follows the life of one Jean Valjean, an ex-convict, and details his path of redemption, which includes his saving of a young orphan girl, Cosette.  The story covers a time span from 1815 to about 1832 and includes such an intricate plot that it's impossible for me to summarize it.  
I know many people know the Story of "Les Mis" because of the Broadway musical based on the book.  I am going to now admit that I am an  uncultured swine and tell you that I have never seen the musical.  And I am only very vaguely familiar with the songs from it.  I know, I'm strange.  So, I do not know how closely the musical follows or does not follow the book, but I really want to watch it now so that I can compare.  

Some things I liked:  Technically, I liked that most of the chapters are really pretty short.  That made tackling such a long book feel not nearly so daunting.  I also feel like the French to English translation was superb.  
This is one of those books where there are several story-lines which all become intertwined and everything connects to everything else some way or another.  I really love that in books.  All of the loose ends get tied up, and I hate loose ends.
I also love in books where I am given sufficient time to really get to know the characters.  By the time I finished the book, I felt that I knew Jean Valjean so well that he could be my brother.  He is someone that you truly come to love and respect throughout the course of the story and miss when it is over.
There were several places in the book where the tenderness of the scenes and the insights brought me to tears.  That is always a good thing.

Some things I could not decide whether I liked or not:
Hugo is very passionate about Paris and France and goes into GREAT detail about its history and architecture.  On the one hand, that's cool and he is a good writer so I'm glad that is preserved for the future generations.  On the other hand, most of his details about the motherland don't feel connected to the story. Well, they do at first, but then after 5 or so chapters of descriptions and history lessons, with no references mentioned to the story at hand, it stops feeling relevant.

Some things I didn't like:  The book reads like a driver who likes to slam on the brakes abruptly and then takes a while before he starts moving again.  While the story is moving along, it is wonderful, amazing, moving, riveting.  But periodically, it halts completely while we are given a history lesson, an intense description of something, or a lecture on the author's views about something such as religion or politics.  Some of those include the complete story of the battle of Waterloo - which could be a book of its own, a diatribe about life in a convent, and the story of how the sewers in France were made.  All of these are several chapters long. While all of these things - the battle of Waterloo, life in a convent, and the sewer system in Paris - do have a place in the story, they do not play a big enough part to warrant the lengthy digressions that happen here.  That's my opinion, anyway.  I would be lying if I said I didn't skim over the history of the sewers.

My rating: 3 out of 3 stars.  (1= good, 2= better, 3=best).  Les Miserables is the kind of book that will stay with me for the rest of my life.  It is also the kind of book that I will read again, not only to catch the things that I missed the first time around, but to revisit the characters that I have come to know and love (or hate) so well over that last month.  It is definitely worth your time.  I just think it's important to know what you're getting into before you start, so that you don't get discouraged somewhere in the battlefield of Waterloo and give up.  I wholeheartedly advise skimming the non-story parts of the book if you get bored with them.  You will miss something, but nothing that will hinder your ability to understand what's going on in the story.

I guess I'd better see the musical now, huh?