10/10
challenging dark sad tense slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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challenging sad slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

I unfortunately like the Disney movie better but that’s all down to the fact Esmeralda in this book dies a horrible death and the Romani community are written through lenses warped by the racism of the past. 
adventurous challenging inspiring sad medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: No

Mmmm...definitely not my favorite classic to date. Terrible balance betweeen the plot and waxing philosophical about all things Parisian, and then some...

Me ha gustado, pero admito que la primera mitad se me hizo bastante pesada, probablemente se deba a que después de haber visto la película todas las ambientación me parecía innecesaria. Lo que mas me ha gustado de este libro es la critica para nada velada que se hace a tanto a la sociedad de la época como a sus instituciones. El autor a logrado crear unos personajes complejos, con sus cualidades y defectos pero también con sus contradicciones. En una nota más personal tengo que decir que odio a Esmeralda por su estupidez y superficialidad pero a la vez estos rasgos son acordes a sus 15 años. El personaje del villano Claude Frollo me parece el más destacado de esta novela.

Must read and still very relevant today!

I was so surprised by this! Everyone knows the story.. of course. It is a strong "shakespearian" drama about love, hatred, passion etc. But what i didn't expected was the way Victor Hugo writes the story, it was so powerful, satirical and down to earth. the action is fast, the dialogues are philosophical and could have been written today.

Forget Darth vader, The joker or Norman Bates. Claude Frollo is the most awesome badass villain ever written (from the books/movies I read or saw). He is a deeply tormented soul who can't handle his own passions. He tries so hard to be a good rational guy but his heart is aching for love... When the love isn't returned hell breaks loose.

PS: The ending!!!


A good story, but Victor Hugo badly needs an editor. Could’ve been a banger if it was 300 pages shorter.

"Notre Dame... This central mother-church is a sort of chimera among the ancient churches of Paris; it has the head of one, the limbs of another, the trunk of a third, and something of them all.

These hybrid structures, as we have observed, are not the less interesting to the artist, the antiquary, and the historian. They show how far architecture is a primitive art, inasmuch as they demonstrate (what is also demonstrated by the Cyclopean remains, the pyramids of Egypt, the gigantic Hindoo pagodas) that the grandest productions of architecture are not so much individual as social, rather the offspring of nations in labor than the inventions of genius; the deposit left by a people; the accumulations formed by ages; the residuum of the successive evaporations of human society -in short, a species of formations. Every wave of time superinduces its alluvion, every generation deposits its stratum upon the structure, every individual brings his stone. Such is the process of the beavers, such that of the bees, such that of men. The great emblem of architecture, Babel, is a bee-hive" (Victor Hugo, p. 99)

For his seductice ideas and breathtaking prose alone (which should be at least a shared merit by the traducer), this novel was a beautiful experience, with a rainbow of existential undertones to be explored. Such as Victor Hugo took it upon himself to revise every nook and cranny of Notre-Dame, this book presents itself as a sort of laberynth with a plethora of secret doors. In the sense of the extensive writings of Hugo about the architecture and history of the land, if one might take it as an invitation to investigate on the chatacters or settings pronounced by Hugo, what one encounters is plenty of stories underneath the story, to put it in some sense, and more than once we encounter moments of curiosity and awe from this rich lore intertwined into the story.

All in all, it was a tough but ever rewarding experience to read this tragedy!
challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes