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gmvader 's review for:
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
by Victor Hugo
My days of respect for the classic French novelists are definitely coming to a middle.
They are, nearly universally, overwritten garbage with a weak plot and ridiculous situations. I know I’m treading on a lot of people’s toes by saying this but I just can’t fathom why some of these books are considered classics. If somebody wrote this kind of thing today it would be ignored.
The eponymous Hunchback of Notre Dame is described early in the book (about page 100) and, except for a short scene that lasts all of two pages, doesn’t show up again until four hundred pages later. There are long passages of explanations about characters that will never be seen again. The apparent heroes of the story are a troupe of idiots.
Phoebus, the captain of the guard, is so flighty and forgetful of everything and everybody that he might as well not exist at all. Esmerelda is clever and kind and brave until something actually threatens her and then she spends the rest of the book simpering about how Phoebus (who doesn’t even remember that she exists) hasn’t saved her yet. This stupidity filters down to the rest of the characters until the entire book is just a confederacy of dunces acting out a play for the entertainment of the author.
At least in Les Miserables Hugo tries to imbue – after a thousand pages – some sense that there was a point to all the endless description. He even ties it up nicely by making the characters sound like they are only slightly stupid. Alexander Dumas – while falling for many of the same over-explaining flaws – can at least have characters that act intelligently.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame only has a plot because the people are incapable of sentient thought. Many times it felt like the characters had forgotten their lines and were just ad-libbing to cover up until somebody gave them a prompt. I find that this is the worst kind of book to have to read because even the idiot plot that is there is still so sparse that it doesn’t matter.
Instead of reading this go watch the Disney adaptation. They managed to turn the characters into actual people, condense the story into something worth seeing, and pull something wonderful out of this epic mess.
They are, nearly universally, overwritten garbage with a weak plot and ridiculous situations. I know I’m treading on a lot of people’s toes by saying this but I just can’t fathom why some of these books are considered classics. If somebody wrote this kind of thing today it would be ignored.
The eponymous Hunchback of Notre Dame is described early in the book (about page 100) and, except for a short scene that lasts all of two pages, doesn’t show up again until four hundred pages later. There are long passages of explanations about characters that will never be seen again. The apparent heroes of the story are a troupe of idiots.
Phoebus, the captain of the guard, is so flighty and forgetful of everything and everybody that he might as well not exist at all. Esmerelda is clever and kind and brave until something actually threatens her and then she spends the rest of the book simpering about how Phoebus (who doesn’t even remember that she exists) hasn’t saved her yet. This stupidity filters down to the rest of the characters until the entire book is just a confederacy of dunces acting out a play for the entertainment of the author.
At least in Les Miserables Hugo tries to imbue – after a thousand pages – some sense that there was a point to all the endless description. He even ties it up nicely by making the characters sound like they are only slightly stupid. Alexander Dumas – while falling for many of the same over-explaining flaws – can at least have characters that act intelligently.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame only has a plot because the people are incapable of sentient thought. Many times it felt like the characters had forgotten their lines and were just ad-libbing to cover up until somebody gave them a prompt. I find that this is the worst kind of book to have to read because even the idiot plot that is there is still so sparse that it doesn’t matter.
Instead of reading this go watch the Disney adaptation. They managed to turn the characters into actual people, condense the story into something worth seeing, and pull something wonderful out of this epic mess.