http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1345971...

I love Les Miserables, both the novel and the show (NB to those who know only the latter - Gavroche is the Thenardiers' son and therefore Eponine's sister), and of course everyone knows the stereotype of the Hunchback, so I was looking forward to reading this. It's a novel of biting social commentary, though set far in the past (1483); the innocent Esmeralda is exploited, persecuted and condemned by the ruling classes, her only defenders the unreliable denizens of the underworld and a disabled bell-ringer. (And her pet goat.) It starts awfully slowly - Hugo takes a very long time to clear his throat, as it were - but the characters are largely engaging, and the action accelerates towards the climax. Knowing that it had been made into a Disney film, which presumably must have a happy ending though I haven't seen it, I was in a state of considerable suspense as to how Hugo would resolve the situation and save the central characters.

It hadn't occurred to me that Disney might have changed the story, so the ending came as a rather brutal shock.

I must say that I still think Les Miserables is the better book, but Notre Dame de Paris is very interesting in the way it takes a lot of the same themes and puts them together with rather different effect. ( )

The infamous story of the disfigured bell ringer and his guardian, the priest, who both fall in love with a beautiful, young gypsy. When Quasimodo tries to save Esmerelda from the gallows, the story ends in tragedy. Disney immortalized these characters and their lives, but Disney got it wrong. There isn't just one bad guy and bunch of good people. Here, no one's innocent and no one gets a happy ending.

The name of the book is a bit misleading, I think. Having seen the Disney movie, I figured the protagonist would be Quasimodo. As odd as it is, though, the book doesn't really have a protagonist. Hugo kind of flits you from character to character in what seems an almost random pattern, often leaving one character at a vital point of the story to go visit the King and his clerk as they discuss how much everything costs. It can be very odd at times and honestly, it wasn't really a style of writing I wholly enjoyed. But then again, I was well aware of Hugo's tendency to go off on tangents before I started the book so it didn't come as a shocker and for the most part, it didn't detract too much from the story.

One thing I wasn't expecting going into the book, however, was an approximate 100 page discription of Paris about a third of the way into the book. Hugo's prose is delightful, but even so I had a hard time getting through this section. However, I could see the relevence before I'd even finished the book. Paris is described as a huge city, branching out from a central location with random buildings connected to other random buildings of little to no similarity. Hugo jumps from one building to another to another, and in the end, he sums the entire description up nice and tidy in about a page. This is the same relationship as the characters. All the characters, who seem to have no relation to the others for the most part, are all connected and each character affects the fate of the others. They all interlock, even though they don't see it themselves. It's very impressive when you sit back and view the grand scope of the story.

All in all, I heartily enjoyed this book and will be purchasing it for myself at some point in the near future. I recommend reading it, but don't expect to walk away feeling happy. The end is tragic (and a few scenes - namely one particular death scene - are very disturbing), no one gets their perfect, Disney ending, and the gargoyles, sadly, do not sing and dance ;-) ( )

Modern stories have done for me, they really have. As I was reading Hugo's masterpiece, I saw how all the relationships tied together from a very early point, and it seemed oh-so-inevitable and tiresomely predictable. Why? Because I've read books that take what Hugo did more than a century ago and have popularised the plot and technique, making it, for want of a better word, kitsch.

But I read on to the end, enjoying myself almost reluctantly. My opinion changed when I reached the chapter about the King; no other writer I can think of would have been so brave to leave the action and excitement of the thieves' revolt to spend a good fifteen pages introducing the king of France, but there's a reason here, and possibly it's the reason for the writing of this book. It's extraordinary. And then I reached the harrowing conclusion, and now I cannot disagree with the critics that say that this is one of the finest stories ever written. I was moved to the point of tears. ( )

I'm at a loss...how to synopsize one of the classics of world literature? Deformed bell-ringer falls for beautiful gypsy? That's only a piece of the story. Along the way, we get Paris history in brief, the construction and architecture of a grand cathedral, a study of Parisian society with all its warts, a commentary on church hierarchy...there's so much more to this story than Disney would have you believe.

Can be tough going -- it's wordy and dense, but worth the effort. ( )

An unforgettable novel with immortal characters. ( )