Les Misérables

Eu nem sei quando eu vi essa edição lindíssima e decidi que precisava reparar esse buraco nas minhas leituras. Só sei que há muito tempo eu admiro esse monstrengo e fico me desafiando a começar. A quarentena tornou esse enfrentamento inevitável, e minha ida pra Israel tornou-o inadiável. Não tem condição de levar esse trambolho pra canto algum, e, portanto, sentei pra enfrentar o monstro.
Fui surpreendido por um livro de leitura extremamente leve, mesmo com as inúmeras referências culturais (históricas, arquitetônicas, etc) que eu frequentemente tinha que parar e procurar. É impressionante como os franceses até hoje tem essa vibe de acordar e ir quebrar tudo um dia, costume vindo das inúmeras revoluções de rua.
Feliz show more ou infelizmente, eu não vi nenhum filme pra fazer qualquer comparação, e eu lembro de melodias soltas de algum musical que eu vi aos 12 anos, OU SEJA, eu fui relativamente spoiler-free. O que eu de fato não esperava em algo tão adaptado era o número surpreendente de capítulos onde o Victor Hugo só faz reflexões soltas: ele fala das inúmeras explorações dentro do esgoto de Paris, fala da evolução do vocabulário e o que ele representa da própria sociedade, dentre outras coisas. Claro que o grosso do livro é focado em explorar os temas caros ao autor: a miséria humana, a necessidade do progresso social, e a moral. Como ele mesmo afirma, o livro acaba sendo uma jornada do inferno ao céu, representada pelo conhecidíssimo Jean Valjean. Ele começa como um criminoso, recém saído da prisão após ser punido por furtar comida e tentar fugir algumas vezes. Depois de 14 anos de sofrimento, a sociedade o rejeita e ele não consegue hospedagem alguma. Um bispo muito amável e caridoso, que fez um voto de pobreza, o acolhe como pode e Jean acaba no impulso roubando-o. Quando a polícia o pega e apresenta ao bispo, o bispo mente, finge que tudo era um presente pra Jean e lhe oferece seus castiçais de prata. Jean se vê transfigurado por aquele episódio e decide se tornar uma boa pessoa para expiar seus pecados, mas acaba recaindo e rouba uma criança. Ainda mais culpado, ele foge, vai morar no interior, acaba virando um industrial brabo produzindo um tipo de vidro e vive de forma super abnegada, doando tudo que tem pros pobres, sendo um grande homem. Eventualmente, ele vira prefeito, mas Jean Valjean continua sendo culpado de ter roubado da criança. Javert, o inspetor de polícia, conhece Valjean da época de prisão e fica super desconfiado do prefeito porque o prefeito é forte igual um touro, igualzinho Jean seria. Alguém acaba sendo preso por 'ser Jean Valjean' e aí ferrou, o prefeito fica muito culpado. Nesse momento, ele já tinha conhecido Fantine, uma pobre jovem que é iludida por um moço, fica grávida, empobrece, entrega sua filha pruma família dona de uma pousada (os Thernadiers) e acaba decaindo pra prostituição antes de começar a trabalhar numa das fábricas do prefeito. Fantine quer muito rever sua filha antes de morrer. Assim, Valjean fica dividido entre salvar o otário que foi pego em seu lugar e proteger Cosette, a filha de Fantine. E aí começa a evolução de Jean: ele vai pro tribunal, admite ser quem é, salva o cara, pede pra ser preso e volta pra vila porque na hora todo mundo fica chocado e desiste. Ele consegue salvar o cara, pede um tempo pra conseguir entregar a filha pra Fantine, mas Javert decide prendê-lo ali. A coitada da Fantine achando que a filha já tava vindo, percebe que a filha nem tá a caminho, vê o seu benfeitor sendo preso e morre de choque. Jean é preso mas foge temporariamente. O resto do livro, pra ser breve, é ele adotando Cosette, criando-a como sua filha e se debatendo sobre o que fazer, optando invariavelmente pelo bem não obstante o quanto isso o prejudica. Valjean, ao fim do livro, é um santo abnegado, e acaba morrendo antes de viver feliz com sua filha casada. Apesar da história do livro ser de fato envolvente, eu tenho que concordar com um crítico que os diálogos acabam parecendo meio artificiais demais, e você cria simpatia pelos problemas dos personagens, mas não desenvolve uma simpatia pelo jeito deles, sabe. Eu devia ter chorado por tudo que o Jean passou, mas tinha ainda ali uma distância que eu não acho que se devia apenas pela linguagem do livro acabar ficando meio antiquada.
O que é ainda mais interessante é como Hugo acaba falando até do meme atual do iceberg ao descrever a sociedade da mesma maneira, e vários outros insights relevantes que ele tem. Não é segredo que VH era pró-revolução de forma geral, e entendia que o Estado deveria remover as pessoas da miséria, que a miséria geraria o crime e um ciclo vicioso e tortuoso. Apenas através da educação gratuita e do sufrágio, a sociedade evoluiria, e era a crença dele que num futuro relativamente próximo, a gente viveria um mundo idílico, sem todas aquelas mazelas. E sim, esse futuro já seria agora, então infelizmente Hugo foi excessivamente otimista. Ao mesmo tempo que o mundo mudou de forma que temos prosperidade muito acima do que ele sonhava prum número ainda maior de pessoas, a gente tem vivido uma pandemia gigantesca, a desigualdade explodindo, a crise climática, etc. E a miséria que ele retrata, que destrói o âmago das pessoas, remove suas esperanças e as torna más não sumiu. No presente momento, vemos ela crescer, se alastrar; vidas tem sido perdidas ou destruídas, e dá pra ver quão certo Hugo estava. No infeliz Brasil dos últimos anos, naturalizamos a barbárie e a morte, nos desumanizamos. Contamos cadáveres como alguém conta gotas de chuva, e sem perspectiva pra oferecer pra ninguém, não podemos esperar algo além daquilo que sentimos: sem esperança, compaixão ou amor, não sobra moral, não sobra construção de uma sociedade. Sobra apenas rancor, amargura, tristeza e ruína. Não se pode esperar um santo como Valjean numa sociedade que apenas sobrevive. O mais surpreendente é quão frequente nossa moral impede que vejamos tantos criminosos como os Thernadiers. E é exatamente como o prefácio (tradução livre): 'Enquanto existirem [...] decretos de danação pronunciados pela sociedade, artificialmente criando infernos em meio à civilização da terra [....]; enquanto os três grandes problemas do século - a degradação do homem pela pobreza, a corrupção da mulher pela fome, a devastação de crianças pela falta de luz - não forem resolvidos [...], enquanto existirem ignorância e pobreza na terra, livros da natureza de Os Miseráveis não deixarão de ser úteis.' Triste o mundo em que há 200 anos suas mazelas permanecem as mesmas. show less

Copy I read was: Translation by Isabel F. Hapgood | Audiobook narrated by Bill Homewood

I came to Les Misérables as someone familiar with and fond of the musical, but not deeply immersed in it. The novel itself felt like a serious undertaking - just shy of 68 hours in audio - but Bill Homewood’s narration is genuinely epic and carries you through what could otherwise feel overwhelming.

The story follows the life of Jean Valjean and the many people whose lives intersect with his, from the benevolent Bishop and Cosette, to the more destructive forces represented by Javert and the Thénardiers. One of the things I enjoyed most was the semi-comic tone Hugo often adopts despite the grim subject matter. There’s a warmth and irony in how show more characters are presented, sometimes gently mocking themselves, sometimes embodying contradiction in a way that feels very human. The Bishop, for instance - giving away everything he owns, including money reimbursed for travel, accompanied by a wry aside on assumptions about greed - is a delight. The Thénardiers, meanwhile, are grotesque and darkly comic in equal measure.

The length of the novel allows you to live with the characters for a long time, and the strength of the characterisation - helped enormously by the narration - makes it surprisingly easy to recognise familiar figures even when they reappear in disguise. Behaviour, voice, and mannerisms are so clearly drawn that there’s a real pleasure in spotting who is who in scenes of partial revelation and misunderstanding.

That said, reflecting both the age of the text and its social context, the portrayal of women is a weak point. Female characters are frequently described as pretty and naïve, and Cosette in particular often seemed implausibly sheltered, disengaged, or incurious about the world around her. The heightened melodrama throughout may also be more a function of the novel’s era than Hugo’s intent, but it does occasionally distance a modern reader.

The broader social commentary - the gulf between rich and poor, the fragility of justice, the moral weight of compassion - remains powerful. Hugo’s famous digressions, from sewers to slang, are often fascinating but can also send the narrative wandering, and I did occasionally lose momentum during those sections.

Overall, this wasn’t quite the life-changing experience some readers describe, but it was far more enjoyable than I’d expected. It’s a vast, humane, often funny novel with moments that still resonate strongly today, despite the many decades that separate it from the modern reader. show less

A stunning read, given that it is a doorstop-sized nineteenth-century novel with a cast of thousands. Dickens would make this story long-winded and turgid, with the sort of word-count padding you expect from hack writers of a later era; Hugo gives you exactly the information you need to portray the places, the people and the times.

The characters are not in any way idealised; Valjean is tragic, Javert is obsessed, Fantine drifts into prostitution as the victim of a rich kid and really remains a victim for the rest of her life, and Thénardier is an utter bastard. (If the well-known musical has a fault, it's that it sets out to make Thénardier and his wife lovable rogues, and they are anything but.)

All this is set against the background show more of major events, all of which are depicted with an almost journalistic immediacy. In the end, the major characters get what they deserve; Valjean gets absolution of a sort, Javert's obsession drives him to suicide when the truth of Valjean's goodness is no longer avoidable, and Thénardier gets a comfortable living on a plantation in the West Indies but dies a (hopefully) nasty death years down the line from a tropical disease.

Yes, I hate Thénardier; and that says something about the characterisation, because I don't normally do hate. And he isn't even a real person! show less

This took me 3 whole days to get through, it's probably the longest narrative I've ever read. I am surprised by how modern it felt, how easy it was to follow, and how much Hugo loved Parisian sewers. Oh Javert, find something better to do with your life! It is so hard to imagine seeing the world so black and white like that, but I know it happens. I haven't seen the movie or play, so I was also surprised how little page time Fantine gets, it's all her daughter in the end. This has so many excellent takes on redemption, love, social issues, and so much history woven in as well.

The brick that breathes.

There is a joke among readers- Les Misérables is a masterpiece. It is also a brick. The unabridged edition runs over 1,400 pages. Hugo dedicates an entire volume to the Battle of Waterloo, which none of his main characters attend. He pauses the story for fifty pages to describe the Paris sewer system. He gives a seventy-page digression on the history of the convent, another on argot (thieves' slang), and a third on the street urchin of Paris. A modern editor would have wept.

And yet. And yet.

I finished this brick, and I understood why it has survived. Les Misérables is not a novel. It is a cathedral built of words: uneven, sprawling, occasionally self-indulgent, but so full of light and shadow and human breath show more that you cannot help but kneel.

What it is:

The story of Jean Valjean, a peasant who steals a loaf of bread for his sister's starving children, spends nineteen years in the galleys, and emerges a bitter, hardened man. A bishop gives him mercy. He breaks his parole, reinvents himself as a factory owner and mayor, and spends the rest of his life running from the police inspector Javert, who cannot believe that a convict can become an honest man. Woven into this chase are Fantine, a factory worker who sells her hair, her teeth, and her body to support her daughter Cosette; the Thénardiers, innkeepers who embody every petty cruelty of the poor; Marius, a young revolutionary who falls in love with Cosette; Gavroche, the street urchin who becomes the soul of the 1832 uprising; and the barricade at the Rue de la Chanvrerie, where boys become men and men become ghosts.

It is the story of grace versus law. Of redemption versus obsession. Of a society that crushes the poor and then blames them for breaking. It is also, in its final third, one of the most heartbreaking love stories ever written.

Why it is a masterpiece (and why I forgive the digressions):

1. The characters are monuments. Jean Valjean is one of the greatest characters in all of literature. Not because he is heroic; he is, but that is not the point. He is great because Hugo gives him a full arc from hatred to love, from brute force to tenderness, from hiding to confession. His inner struggle, to do the right thing even when it destroys his life, is the engine of the novel. Javert is his perfect foil: the law made flesh, incapable of mercy, shattered when he discovers that grace exists. Fantine is tragedy distilled. The Thénardiers are monsters, but they are real monsters, the kind you have met. Gavroche dies singing a song that mocks his own death. Cosette and Marius are young and in love, and Hugo makes you believe that their happiness is worth the thousand pages of suffering that precede it.

2. The prose is symphonic. Victor Hugo wrote like a man who had no editor and did not care. His sentences are long, rolling, packed with clauses and digressions and sudden shifts from the sublime to the grotesque. He will describe a battle, then a bishop's garden, then a convict's soul, then a child's broken toy; all in the same chapter. It should not work. It works because his voice is so unmistakable, so passionate, so convinced that everything in the world is connected. The Waterloo digression is not about Waterloo. It is about the randomness of fate, the contingency of history, and the way that a single lost button (literally, a button) can change the course of empires. By the time you realize what he is doing, you have already been converted.

3. The theme of mercy is revolutionary. Jean Valjean is offered grace by Bishop Myriel, who lies to the police to save him from a second prison sentence. That moment, the candlesticks on the mantel changes everything. The rest of the novel is Valjean trying to become worthy of that mercy, giving it to others (Fantine, Cosette, Marius, even Javert) even when it costs him. In a world of legalism, of punitive justice, of the relentless counting of debts, Les Misérables argues that mercy is the only force that can break the cycle of vengeance. Javert cannot understand this. Javert kills himself rather than accept mercy. The novel does not call him a villain. It calls him a tragedy.

4. The barricade will destroy you. The last hundred pages of Les Misérables are among the most gripping I have ever read. Hugo spent 1,300 pages making you love these characters, and then he puts them on a street corner with a pile of cobblestones and a handful of gunpowder. You know, historically, that the June Rebellion of 1832 failed. You know that almost everyone died. And still, when Gavroche climbs over the barricade to collect cartridges from the dead, singing a vulgar song, and a bullet finds him, and he falls, and he sings again, and another bullet finds him, and he falls for good; I wept. I am weeping now, writing this. Hugo earned that tear.

5. The ending is perfect. Valjean confesses his past to Marius. Marius, horrified, drives him away. And then, slowly, Marius learns the truth that this "convict" saved his life, raised his wife, forgave his enemies, and gave up everything for love. The final scene, where Valjean dies in Cosette's arms, with the candlesticks on the table beside him, is the most beautiful death in literature. He is not afraid. He has done his work. He says: "The night is ending. The day is beginning." And an angel waits.

Where a modern reader might stumble (honest, but forgiveable):

1. It is very long. Not "long for a beach read" long. Long in the way that mountains are tall. You must commit. You cannot skim. And you must accept that Hugo will sometimes lecture you for fifty pages about subjects that seem irrelevant. They are not irrelevant. They are context. But you have to trust him.

2. The prose style is not for everyone. If you love clean, minimalist sentences (Hemingway, Carver), you will find Hugo exhausting. He is maximalist. He piles clause upon clause. He uses three adjectives where one would do. But that is the music of the book. Learn to hear it.

3. The social commentary can feel dated. Hugo was a passionate republican, a critic of the monarchy, a believer in progress. Some of his arguments about poverty, education, and criminal justice are still urgent. Others (his long digression on the convent as a "prison" that he nevertheless admires) are tangled in his own contradictions. You do not have to agree with him. You only have to listen.

Who should read this:

Anyone who believes that literature can change how you see the world.
Readers who love big, sprawling, emotional nineteenth-century novels (Dickens, Tolstoy, Dumas).
People who are not afraid to cry over fictional characters.
Those who want to understand what "grace" actually means.

Who might struggle:

If you cannot tolerate digressions or slow pacing.
If you need a plot that moves quickly and cleanly.
If you are not prepared to invest weeks in a single book.

Final verdict:

Les Misérables is not a perfect book. It is too long, too meandering, too sure of its own righteousness. But it is a great book, one of the greatest. It has outlived its detractors, its era, and even its author's political ambitions. It survives because it speaks to something permanent: the human capacity for both cruelty and kindness, and the stubborn, unreasonable hope that the second can overcome the first.

Five stars is a rating for normal books. Les Misérables needs a different scale. But Goodreads does not have one, so five stars it will remain. show less

I won't even lie, this book took me 3-4 months to read? I did put it down a lot, but I always picked it up again.

Having said that, this book is probably one of the most rewarding books I've ever read. This book left one of the greatest impressions on me. I don't usually have 'favourite' books - I can't pick one book to end all books, but when I think about the books that affected me most, this book comes out on top.

I read the unabridged version of this book and I have to say it did take me quite a while to get used to Victor Hugo's writing style. He will build a world meticulously, talking of a village and its history, building it brick by brick. Nothing will happen, and as a reader, I would often drown in the details.

Then, suddenly, a show more character enters the scene and so much happens in 20 pages that I can't even look up because the plot grips me so much. World-building aside, I adored a lot of Victor Hugo's characters.

Jean Valjean, Javert and a couple of other characters all have very distinct character arcs and it's wonderful to watch them transform.

This book has one of the strongest and most resonant voices I've ever read. It talks about class, about judging people prematurely, about compassion, about love, about how a person's past is always their future. These are all still very relevant ideas and so it's not as antiquated as you might think.

Fair warning, though - this book will make you cry. I cried for the last 100 pages or so. (I suppose it is called 'The Miserable', which is sort of indicative and warning enough - but still.)

This book does a really brilliant job of finishing the plot into a nice little dovetail, which I really appreciated. And afterwards I wondered how one man could write a book like that, and what an incredible feat it must've been. show less

I always remember cursing Hugo for the last eight pages when I knew he was putting on the emotional tourniquet but I had to cry anyway. I am still not utterly convinced of the suicide element and I think Cosette was awful just dumping Val Jean after he had been a father to her, but I suppose Hugo knew how people are.

I read this long before the musical which is nothing like this book. The huge introspection, the brilliant 100 pages on the priest at the beginning who does one thing and on thing only to change Val Jean's life. The unremitting unfairness of it all, the weariness of a society of animals pretending to be rational for its own sake and not for the sake of their inescapable natures.