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• Les Misérables (Signet Classics)
Victor Hugo

Signet Classics, 1987 - 1488 pages

average customer review:based on 255 reviews
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   highly recommended  highly recommended






Complete Version of my favorite book

I will confess that Les Miserables is my favorite book of all time. And this unabridged English translation is excellent. Les Miserables is Victor Hugo fully developed: his political, moral, and story telling faculties are at their zenith.

Please read this novel. It's a good one.

The hero in this story is a convict. The evildoer is society. A society that is quick to condemn, a convict who forgives and shows compassion. It is a story of redemption, of revolution, of love. This is a book that shows the hypocrisy of a society with no compassion, no heart.

Our hero, Jean Valjean is given many moral choices, some he fails, most he passes. He steals from the Bishop who forgives him. Valjean becomes a successful businessman, but faces an impossible moral dilemma. Read the book to find out how that comes out. Javert, the indomitable policeman is constantly on Jean Valjean's tail. Will he be caught? Continually Jean Valjean faces critical moral choices? What would you do if you were Jean Valjean?

Victor Hugo tells the story like, well like Victor Hugo. From the detailed description of the Battle of Waterloo, to Hugo's story of the Paris barricade, to the emotional roller coaster tale of Jean Valjean, the story is intense. And in a way a bit frightening. There are violent scenes, sappy scenes of agape love, and funny scenes. Not horse laugh funny, but amusing funny. There are bad guys like Thenardier and upright but short sighted guys like Javert. I have thought about Javert. Maybe you will to. Cosette is the lost child that Jean Valjean . . . well I don't want to ruin the story.

Victor Hugo has put some thought into what makes people tick. So you believe these characters are really facing these very human situations. Hugo's descriptions are meticulous and bring on the fictive dream, which is what fiction is all about. And while Hugo is very intense and wordy there is a lot of action.

There is no question that my perspective was challenged by this book. And it continues to challenge when one considers America's prison's. When children are still raised in horrible circumstances like Cosette.

If you do not like to be challenged, if you do not like uncomfortable thoughts, this book is not for you.

On the other hand if you are open to moral challenge, can stomach critiques of the status quo and critiques of authority this may be your book. You may cry, you might cheer, but you will surely think.

I have read this book several times. Please read the unabridged version, the abridged versions miss too much of the driving plot. Also there are versions that appear to be unabridged but are in fact heavily edited by the translator. Stay away from those. This Signet Classic version is complete and unabridged. It's a keeper.




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Read Les Mis before you die! Don't die before you read Les Mis!!

If you know about Les Mis, you know it. If you haven't a clue, well, be prepared to be overwhelmed by a new universe that is waiting to be discovered.

Les Miserables shakes the soul, stirs the conscience, awakens the emotions, expands the thoughts, reaffirms the human nature, enlightens life.

In return for this reward, full and complete attention is demanded. The more you give to the book, the higher the enjoyment.

While the story is timeless, Les Mis's style is what makes it magical.

It is poetry in prose, fluidity in phrase, poignancy in observation, illuminating in description, satisfying in completeness; achieving a pinnacle in language use. If the translation is this, imagine the French original!

The recent complete reading was my second, after having first read it more than ten years ago, appreciating it even more deeply given my own life's experience to provide a keener perspective.

As an example of the finest writing in literature, here's an excerpt of one the best romantic exposition on Love I have come across, ever:

The reduction of the universe to a single being, the explosion of a single being into God, this is love.
Love is the salutation of the angel to the stars.
How sad the soul when it is sad from love!
What a void is the absence of the being who alone fills the world! Oh! How true that the beloved becomes God!
One would understand that God might might be jealous if the Father of all had not clearly made creation for the the soul, and the soul for love!
One glimpse of a smile under a white crepe hat with liliac veil is enough for the soul to enter the palace of dreams.
God is behind everything, but everything hides God. Things are black, creatures are opaque. To love a human being is to make her transparent.
Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees.

The future belongs still more to the heart than the mind. To love is the only thing that can occupy and fill up eternity. The infinite requires the inexhaustible.
Love partakes of the soul itself. It is of the same nature. Like the soul, it is a divine spark: it is incorruptible, indivisible, imperishable. It is a point of firewithin us, which is immortal and infinite, which nothing can limit and nothing can extinguish.
God can add nothing to the happiness of those who love one another, but to give them unending duration. After a life of love, an eternity of love is a superabundance, indeed; but to intensify the ineffable felicity that love gives to the soul in this world is impossible, even for God. God is the plenitude of heaven; love is the plenitude of man.
You look at a star for two reasons, because it is luminous and because it is impenetrable. You have at your side a softer radiance and a greater mystery, woman.
Whoever we may be, we all have our living, breathing beings. If they fail us, the air fails us, we stifle, then we die. To die for lack of love is horrible. The asphyxia of the soul.
If you are stone, be loadstone, if you are plant, be sensitive, if you are man, be love.
Nothing is enough for love. We have happiness, we wish for paradise; we have paradise, we wish for heaven.
O ye who love each other, all this is in love. Be wise enough to find it. As much as heaven, love has contemplation, and more than Heaven, passionate delight.
Love has its childinshness, the other passions have their pettiness. Shame on the passions that make man little! Honor to what makes him a child!
There is a strange thing- do you know what? I am in the night. There is a being who has gone away and carried the heavens with her.
Oh, to be laid side by side in the same tomb, hand clasped in hand, and from to time, in the darkness, to caress a finger gently, that would be enough for my eternity.
You who suffer because you love, love still more. To die of love is to live by it.
Love. A somber starry transfiguration is mingled with this torture. There is ecstasy in the agony.
O joy of the birds! It is because they have their nest that they have their song.
Love is a celestial breathing of the air of paradise.
Deep hearts, wise minds take life as God has made it; it is a long trial, an unintelligible preparation for an unknown destiny. This destiny, the true one, begins for man with the first step inside the tomb. Meantime, love and suffer, hope and contemplate. Woe, alas, to the one who shall have loved bodies, forms, appearances only. Death will take everything from him. Try to love souls, you shall find them again.
In the street I met a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat was threadbare- there were holes at his elbows; the water seeped through his shoes and the stars through his soul.

What a great thing, to be loved! What a greater thing still, to love! The heart becomes heroic through passion. It is no longer composed of anything but what is pure; it no longer rests on anything but what is elevated and great. An unworthy thought can no more spring up in it than a nettle on a glacier. The lofty and severe soul, inaccessible to common passions and common emotions, rising above the cloude and shadows of this world, its follies, its falsehoods, its hatreds, its vanities, its miseries, inhabits the blue of the skies, and no longer feels anything but the deep subterranean commotion of destiny, as the summit of the mountains feels the quaking of the earth.

If no one loved, the sun would go out.



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Short review for a huge book

I bought this book after seeing the movie "Les Miserables" with Liam Neeson. I just knew there had to be "more to the story."

I loved this book!! There are abridged versions, but I am thankful that I read the UNabridged version, and I found this translation wonderful.

If you enjoy the sound of a well turned phrase, you will love the way Hugo writes. Although this book was 1463 pages in length, I enjoyed every page.

Reading this has given me a new appreciation for the history of the period and made me think about the prison system of that time.

Les Miserables is now upon my shelf of "Favorite Novels" and I plan to read it again.

Oh....and yes....the movie pales in comparison to "the rest of the story"! Don't let the length of this book stop you. Pick it up and begin! I hope you love it as much as I did. Soak your mind in each well turned phrase: "At times she saw him,"(Monsieur Thenardier)"as a lighted candle; at others, she felt him like a claw." "A torn conscience leads to an unraveled life." (Regarding Monsieur Thenardier)

Try it, you'll love it!!


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Most moving novel I have ever read

I write this review wiping tears from my eyes, having just spent the better part of an hour sobbing quietly at my desk after finishing Les Miserables. The characters are so well written that you will find yourself making connections with your own life on every page. Even if you have not personally experienced some, or even many of the situations, emotions and circumstances of the characters found here, this book will show you what is possible in this life and will forever expand your conscience. I don't think I'm in the proper mind-set to write a coherent, objective review right now. I'm usually a sardonic cynic who mocks the sort of sentimentality found here, but this book has changed my life. It will change yours too, so please read it before you die!


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greatest novel ever

this is a long novel, but it is very rewarding to finish the whole book. some parts of the book may be boring, but for the parts about the main character, i can hardly put down the book. i don't know about the translation since i don't know French, but the English is crystal clear. i love this book.


reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, page 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14



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