As I try to get through the classic novels, I opened this one with great anticipation and curiosity. Unfortunately, I thought it was really bad, with the worst characteristics of the Romantic style.
The book starts off in the sea, with a counter-revolutionary aristocrat about to be delivered to the shores of Brittany. Then there is a whole chapter where a cannon rips free in the ship's hold, so detailed and melodramatic that it can only be there to symbolise something-everything that will fillow in the novel. The tone is surrealistic, with moralising asides thrown in as the cannon crushes sailors left and right. From there, the book just plummets downhill: it turns out that the aristo's ward, who is as good as he is evil, is the opposing representative from Revolutionary France. There is also a Revolutionary hanging judge, a guardian of ideology, who just so happens to have been the boy's tutor who loved him as the son he never had. Etc., etc., getting more and more outlandish as the plot thickens. There is even a section of dialogue, where the guillotine talks of its task and function, also dripping with the crudest symbolism. Of course, the end, which I will leave to the reader's imagination, is supposed to summarise how the Revolution ate its own children, oozing with puerile irony. While there are some good points to the novel - in particular the scenes with Marat, Robespierre, and Danton in debate - they pale in comparison to the ridiculous coincidences and gushing moralistic melodrama.
Hugo may be one of the few classic authors who needed films to edit out the poor plot devices he employed. His work makes great films, but the full novels are simply over the top.
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