A wonderful novel that has been popularised especially through
the cinema, when starting to read it you already feel at home. You
feel safe and comfortable in a narrative that has all the elements
to keep you engaged until the end. It has vivacity, it has drama,
it has swift changes of events, it has all that is required to keep
your mind and breath busy with a wonderful plethora of characters
and difficult situations that puts your honest curiosity at test.
At my reading style Kindle says 48 hours of reading. Do it, it will
be approximately the most pleasant 48 hours in a long time.
The events happened more than two hundred years ago, but the
narrative is so fresh, so piercing, it will quickly make you forget
this time burden. Only occasionally you’ll be reminded that the
events happened a long time ago, you’ll learn lots about different
types of carriages and horses, clothing and a society that in its
expression was so different from ours, but in its ineffectiveness
so close and almost unchanged until today.
The construction of the characters resembles the construction
of a cathedral. Hugo spares no effort into going into the depths of
a soul, or following it into the heights of their development. It
is psychology long before its time, it is morality in its purest
forms, it is philosophy through all its pores, it is complex and
beautiful, maybe we shouldn’t avoid the word anymore...it is a
masterpiece. Novels like this are so rare in the worlds literature,
but you quickly feel their Devine touch, it is the density of their
description, the beautiful manipulation of scenes and actions which
require not only talent, but genius and the dexterity of a great
craftsman.