Cover via Amazon
This review was written 4/5/09
Synopsis (from Amazon)
Set in 1482, “The Hunchback of Notre-Dame” is a compelling story of love and betrayal, brutal deeds and one of the most famous acts of revenge in world literature. Quasimodo, the hunchback of the title, is one of fiction’s most extreme characters – beneath his monstrous disfigurement, his love for the beautiful Esmerelda reveals a heart full of intense emotion. The novel is set in the great cathedral of Notre-Dame and had a profound influence on the Romantic Movement.
Review
I’ll say from the onset I gave up on this book before finishing it. I really wasn’t getting into it. I found that there was very little real story line and a lot of waffle. Right from the start I had this impression but wasn’t letting myself give up until I had at least reach 100 pages. By page 100 there was actually some story- enough that I decided to keep going but the next chapter put me off again. The story stopped for a rant about how Notredame had changed since being built, I had finally begun to be able to read this story without being frustrated by the lack of story when it as cut short by this rant which really frustrated me. If the actual story had gone on a bit longer before this I may have persevered but I had only just decided it might be worth carrying on.
I may pick up the book again, and to that end have kept my place marked but, for now at least, I’m too frustrated to carry on.
1/5
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Those rants happened a lot in books of the time–I wonder that so many of them ever became so popular. Did their editors not have red ink yet?
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Who knows? Maybe people were better at persevering those days, or maybe people actually talked like that!
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The style of classics can certainly make them hard to read today. Long passages, one-dimensional characters etc. I read Les Miserables and its much the same.
FYI Hunchback was written because the Cathedral was going to be torn down (It was neglected and falling apart) and the book was part of an effort to get it restored and saved instead of destroyed. Thus the passages about the cathedral etc.
Maybe you should try reading an abridged version? It might be easier to ‘swallow.’ 🙂
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I didn’t know that, maybe I would enjoy an abridged version more
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I like Victor Hugo, he once said: “The Notre-Dame had been growing old due to the numberless degradations and mutilations which time and men both caused. Time had had notched its surface here and there, and gnawed it everywhere; political and religious revolution had torn its rich garment, carving and sculpture, burst its rose windows, broken its necklace of arabesques and tiny figures, torn out its statues.”
I tried to write a blog about him , see whether you like it: https://stenote.blogspot.com/2018/07/an-interview-with-victor.html
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