A review by zuomiriam
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

5.0

Thoroughly impressed with this book; despite its length, it fully captured my attention throughout (at no point did I want to stop reading it). Dumas weaves together an intricate story line centered around the wrongful imprisonment of Edmond Dantes. We enter the narrative immediately before Dantes is arrested and thrown into a dungeon and meet all of the characters involved in his imprisonment; following Dantes' 14-year imprisonment and subsequent daring escape, Dumas slowly builds up to a sweet, prolonged, and impeccably planned vengeance. It's enormously satisfying to see Dantes, now calling himself the Count of Monte Cristo, gradually insert himself into the lives of people who had ruined his and then exert his endless fortune to wreak havoc in their lives (often in parallel ways to how they had wronged him). I'm impressed by how Dumas managed all the intertwined storylines while writing; a number of minor characters flitter in and out of the main narrative at very opportune moments, and the timing of events is cleverly slotted together. The novel is just insanely clever, and it's kind of hard to wrap your mind around the idea that one person (largely self-educated) put it together. Towards the end, Monte Cristo recovers more of his humanity, which he thought he'd lost forever, and I found the novel's resolution quite touching. This novel is a giant in literary classics (not just out of sheer length), and I'd definitely recommend reading it in full rather than an abridged version -- the small details are largely what makes it so enjoyable.