This Wordsworth edition carries on from mid-way during a section about Marius. This second half of the book, similar to the first, has several big essays on connected subjects. Here they include such topics as the slang used by the underclass, the street children of Paris, and the Paris sewers. I must admit to skipping the odd page here and there to get back to the story. The storyline itself was more straightforward in its telling, not skipping around in time quite as much.

The main issue with this second volume was that I didn't like the character of Marius who spends most of his time mooning around once he falls in love with Cosette and not taking notice of what is going on around him. He also is very indecisive such as when he fails to carry out a crucial action when he is supposed to be summoning the police to prevent the possible murder of a good-natured older man, Cosette's father as he thinks, by Thenardier and his cronies. (Of course the reader knows that this is really Jean Valjean who is in danger of being sent back to the galleys if the police know who he really is - and the police inspector in charge is Javert, his old adversary.) He allows his prejudices and inability to ask a straight question when necessary to do a grave disservice to Jean Valjean as the story comes to a close. I also did not take to Cosette - although she is the light of both Marius' and John Valjean's lives she came across as a non-entity, and is treated always as a such with a "don't bother your pretty little head" attitude shown towards her when matters such as finances arise. She spends the whole book having no interest in the dangers she and Valjean are in, and is in fact oblivious, even though it is only nine years since he rescued her from the Thenardiers. Although she was a child, she was old enough to understand something at least of her childhood - she is about sixteen or seventeen by the time she gets properly together with Marius I think. Her failure to even ask what is going on shows a vapid complacency which the author seems to believe is the charm of women.

What I did like was the character of the young street urchin, Gavroche. I found his fate the saddest of what happens to the insurrectionists who otherwise were pretty much indistinguishable. I also found the ending very sad, especially as to me it seemed unnecessary if Marius had only been less of an idiot.

On balance therefore I rate this second volume also as a 3-star read. ( )

A great approach to printing longer classics. I look forward to adding the additional volumes.

It’s been nearly a decade since I read Les Mis. This edition splits up Hugo’s epic tome into 3 smaller volumes, so as to get the depth of the story and characters, ( )

Hugo’s gigantic novel is the great bugbear of French literature, lying like a Massif Central across the cultural landscape of 19th century France. Hugo himself is the central peak of French literature, at least in his own estimation. Napoleon is supposed to have said, echoing Louis XIV: La France, c’est moi, and if he didn’t, Hugo certainly would have, and he might have added: La literature, c ‘est moi.

Hugo’s egoism and certitude of his own greatness is legendary. At the heart of his 1866 epic, The Toilers of the Sea, for example, is a huge monogram of Hugo’s initial: the wrecked ship wedged between the two vertical pillars of rock, stranded high and dry by the receding sea: The huge capital H formed by the two Douvres linked by the crossbar of the Durande stood out against the horizon in a kind of crepuscular majesty. Hugo associated himself with majesty, with size. Les Miserables, huge, sprawling, prolix, is Hugo at his most majestic.

In the debates about the purpose of art which were such a feature of 19th century culture, Hugo was on the side of those who believed that art should have a purpose beyond itself. Art for Hugo should subordinate itself to political necessity, which he saw as moral enlightenment, the betterment of humanity, Progress. Art should morally uplift. Art should teach. This view of art is everywhere evident in Les Miserables, with its book length rants on the evils of capital punishment and religious incarceration, the moral depravity of the ancient regime, the evils of poverty, the role of women, the injustices of the penal system, the nature of history, the sociological study of argot, the legitimacy or otherwise of insurrection.

Part of the reason for Shakespeare’s greatness, for Dostoevsky’s also, is that nowhere in their work can you point to a view and say: “This is what the author believes, this is what he wants us to believe.” Shakespeare the man is entirely absent from his plays; Dostoevsky took care to keep his own views out of his novels and never to privilege one view over another. With Shakespeare and Dostoevsky, the reader is always given the role of interpreter and final arbiter between the great dialogues of the plays and novels.

Hugo’s strategy is the opposite. In other writers, it is necessary to always hold in mind the gap between the narrator and the author, who, theoretically, are quite different. In Hugo, the opposite is true. The narrator is always Hugo, and we always know exactly what he intends, what he thinks, and what he means, because he tells us, unambiguously, at length. In the narrative voice, in the same way that Hugo the man positioned himself in the society of his time, Hugo the narrator positions himself as the Great Teacher, the Great Reformer, the Seer of Society, the High Priest of Progress, the Almighty Father. The reader is given the role of student, of disciple, of child, and any movement on the part of the reader towards independent thought, towards personal interpretation, is strictly prohibited by the narrative voice. This takes place on the level of content and on the level of language, as we can see if we look in more detail at his style....

Read the full review on The Lectern. ( )

Not my favorite translation. ( )

The truth is, I didn't finish this book, but abandoned it halfway through. Everything started to just be more of the same, and still more of the same, and yet more of the same still. I usually roll my eyes when people indignantly say that a book could have been written at half its length and lose nothing - usually I think this opinion belongs to someone who reads for plot alone, and I pity them from my Higher-Art-Than-Thou viewpoint for missing all the many other glorious reasons one reads a book. But this is one exception.

On reading Les Miserables, I felt as if I was stuck in a room with Victor Hugo. He was sitting well back in his chair with his hands on his head and one ankle resting on the other knee, and he was holding forth at great and unnecessary length on all his opinions, prejudices and advice-to-the-less-learned. This book is not so much a book, as Hugo pinning you down and telling you all the deep thoughts he had while sitting alone in the pub the night before. And the pity of it is, Hugo is not George Eliot, or E.M Forster, or any of the many other writers I understand use the novel to present their insightful ideas and philosophies. The sad fact is, Hugo is simply a prejudiced and strong-minded old man.

At first I enjoyed it. I liked his digressions (still do prefer them to the actual story) and liked arguing with his opinions in my head. Meeting his type of person in real life can be entertaining, even endearing, in small doses. If Les Mis had been half its length, I would be prepared to accept it as a classic worth reading. But for what it is, it's just tooooo long.

As a P.S. I will add - I am sure reading it in English is at least half the reason I didn't love it as so many people do. I believe the original French is full of subtle word-play and beauty that can't be transferred to English. If I ever become fluent in French, I shall revisit Friend Hugo and see what I think of him then.

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (1982)