A review by mpatrick_96
Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

adventurous dark emotional informative inspiring reflective sad tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

I really enjoyed my experience of reading this. I chose to go for the heavily abridged Penguin edition, and I can't say that I regret that decision! It's obviously very pacy and cuts the majority of Hugo's infamous diversions (that I've heard are still very much worth the time and effort to read). But I was happy to get to the meat of the story, and I think that the editors of this version did an amazing job whittling down the behemoth into something that still had a nice flow and carried emotional weight.

It's a timeless and moving story that I think has and will always contain parallels in life. The characters are reflections of real people, whether those we know personally or not, and they will always exist. Victor Hugo's idea was to create a novel that gave voice to the downtrodden of society, and I can't think of many novels that do it as successfully (or more beautifully) than this one.