Rating: 
Summary: Great, with all its faults.
Review: Long-winded and eloquent, tender and cynical, passionate and sane, Victor Hugo made literature by adding to life, rather than subtracting from it. Hugo sees life from many sides. He finds good in the revolution and the monarchy, the priest and the skeptic, but also roots of evil in each. Hugo is Humanist and Christian, pious and scornful, lover and long-winded story-teller whose acquaintance one does well to cultivate on a rainy day. He is also preachy. This book is a series of sermons sandwiched between narrative. He is a poet who inflicts on his readers a maddening romantic history of the Paris sewer at a critical point in the plot. Like Dickens, his coincidences defy all plausible odds. I felt like docking Hugo a star for all these forms of "extravagence," but then decided, in the spirit of romanticism, to add an extra five and then take them away again, leaving a full complement. Only a person who has failed to grasp this book's essential greatness would discount it on account of such failings. Even the demerits of a work like this add something to its beauty, like the coloring in smoky quartz. Hugo excells in description of character, mood, and aphorism. Here are a few of the latter: "The girl who knows herself to be pretty is less likely to become a nun, the sense of vocation varying inversely with the degree of beauty." "Skepticism, that dry-rot of the intellect, had left him without a whole thought in his head." "Two riches which the rich often lack -- work, which makes a man free, and thought, which makes him worthy of freedom." "They made the fatal blunder of mistaking the discipline of the soldier for the consent of the nation. These are the delusions that destroy thrones." I took Hugo with me on a trip to China, and found him a very good traveling companion...
Rating:
Summary: One of the great books of all time
Review: Les Miserable would probably be seen by most literary critics as a minor work of propaganda marred by undue melodrama. Despite this it is one of the most important works of literature written. It is about a French peasant John Valjean who is imprisoned for stealing a loaf of bread. His family was starving and he had no money. He escapes from a prison hulk and initially shelters in the house of a Bishop. This is one of the most moving scenes written. It is only a chapter but has been reproduced separately from the book as part of school anthologies. Valjean steals some silver candlesticks from the Bishop. He is caught a short distance away and taken back. The Bishop tells the arresting policeman that he has given the candlesticks away so that Valjean will not be punished. The novel is enormous. It follows the life of Valjean as he sets up a business and becomes successful. However a police officer Javert remorselessly pursues him. The book was important in shaping the way that society thought about crime, the notion of justice and the obligation that people have to each other and society has to its members. It created such a stark portrait of the injustice of rigid laws that it was a catalysts for the reform of the criminal justice system. It is one of the books that has shaped modern thinking.
Rating:
Summary: A marvelous read
Review: This book is one of my favorite books of all time. I had the abridged version brought to my attention, but opted for the unabridged translation, and oh, the wonder of it all. I have read literally thousands of books, but this and the King James Version of the Bible are my two favorite books to read when I want to remind myself of the true meaning of charity, forgiveness, and love.
Rating:
Summary: INCROYABLE
Review: Without a doubt the best book written by anybody with two arms and two legs since the Big Bang. Admittedly, as is the case with most, I was indeed daunted by the sheer size of the book, but after reading a few of these reviews it seemed it would be worth it. How right I was. Never have 1000+ pages passed so quickly, I was convinced my cover had been smothered in superglue. From the incident with Bishop Myriel to Valjean's death, this book captivated my mind for three months. For me, the most moving part was the death of Jean Valjean. Hugo has this genius that makes your heart miss a beat at certain points, for example when the third spadeful of earth fell on the coffin in which Valjean was hiding, and when Javert first met Valjean as M. Madeleine, and when Valjean finds himself trapped in the sewer during the fighting on the streets. A valuable piece of advice I'd like to offer readers of the book is to avoid the film(1998). Liam Neeson's acting is absolutely superb but the film misses out huge, important chunks of the story and misses out crucial bits. When Valjean is in the sewer during the fighting, he simply undoes the lock and steps out, without any sign of Thenardier. Gavroche does not sing his song as he is getting shot at. But the most blatant execution of them all, which completely ruins the film for anyone who has read the book, is that the film ends when Javert commits suicide. - Valjean is still alive, and Marius and Cosette have not been reunited and therefore not married. Valjean's death is the most gripping part of the story, and the reunion and subsequent marriage of Cosette and Marius is also pivotal. To sum up, an immortal book, timeless and simply wonderful. I am now reading The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Rating:
Summary: AWSOME!!!
Review: This is a must read tro anyone who loves the english language. This book should be taught in high school! When you first read it, the plot will absorb your mind and take you on an adventure that you will never expiriece again. Every chapter will capture the reader's imagination with images that only Victor Hugo can show us. Every part of the journey the reader would be quickly shocked of what he/she is reading. Th edesriptions are exceptional. you can not describe scenes as well as Victor Hugo did in this novel, nor can you dare to resist the plot that he has outlined. It's hard to say so many things for this book because this is absolutley an unearthly book that a reader will never believe
Rating:
Summary: les miserables
Review: I loved this book. It described the power of human compassion and the the lack of compassion experienced during the time of the revolution. It makes you put things into a different percpective and really calls to your senses. This book was very well written and very vivid. Victor Hugo really proves himself to be a talented and master writer.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing
Review: This book is nothing short of a masterpiece. The way Victor Hugo goes out of his way to make sure no details are overlooked is amazing. Jean Valjean is the most heroic main character i have ever read about. I seriously could feel the pain of the characters, they were written about so realistically. When i finished Les Miserables, I could not stop thinking about it... for days even...
Rating:
Summary: A titanic piece of work
Review: Victor Hugo, the great Romantic, creates a whole world in this supreme novel. You can not enjoy it if you don't plunge into it and live inside for several (quite) days. I join the club of "don't read abridged versions": if you're not willing to savor the book, read something you are able to eat and digest. The story is well known, if only for the musical, which I don't want to see. Jean Valjean is a poor guy who is imprisoned for stealing a piece of bread. 20 years after, he gets out of prison and steals from a priest who has been good to him. The rest is the epic of the permanent reinvention of an essentially good man who is haunted by his past, incarnated in Javert, the relentless policeman. This epic book confronts many issues, the main one being the judicial law vs. moral law. Or "good" versus "right". But it is not a treatise, it's a novel which situates the action in a broad, wide context. For example, in the episode where Valjean takes refuge in a convent, Hugo depicts the situation, characteristics and life in French convents. When Valjean rescues Mario from death in the barricades, and travel along the Paris sewer system, Hugo tells us the story of this system of sewers. For impatient and light readers, these are boring and unnecessary digressions. For the good reader, they put the whole story in its environment, which is precisely why the book leaps from tender and moving to epic and historical. It is full of adventures, moral dilemmas, difficult situations for the characters, and a tragical mood. The action moves from one place to another, spanning many years and focusing alternatively on the many characters, so it is constantly on the move. The characters are not simple stereotype: they are human beings with understandable, if questionable, motivations for what they do, and become almost real as you read. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Timeless and Powerful
Review: This is an exciting tale of adventure, which narrates the obsessive pursuit of a man on the run by an obssessed detective--but it is also one of the greatest evocations of human beings in love, as well as in despair; of their hopes for the future and regrets about the past. It is also a great expression of compassion for human suffering and a monument to the spirit of liberal humanitarianism. In my humble opinion, it is probably the definitive 19th-century romantic novel, hands down.
Rating: 
Summary: Victor, tu me fais miserable
Review: I write this review to give a healthy antidote to all those 5-star ratings. While it deserves its stature as the "war and peace" precursor, Tolstoy's book is instrumental in showing all the glaring weaknesses of les Miserable. The main story is very absorbing, there's no doubt about it. Yet, Hugo's attempt to integrate his tale in the flow of history is just unsuccessful. At times even laughable. To me these digressions, probably missing from the musical (?), simply kill an otherwise fine novel. The discription of the battle of Waterloo, or of the Paris' sewer system, may be of interest to those writing dissertations on the subjects, but realy do not add any essence to the story. This book strikes me like the literary equivalent of those Delacroix paintings, that take up way too much space in the Louvre. That's a shame because Hugo had the talent of a painter like Ingres.
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