Les Miserables a New Unabridged Translation (Signet Classics)

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Summary: Outstanding Love Story - A must read!
Review: This book tops my list of books that anyone in/or looking for love must read. A story of hardship, endurance, commitment and ultimatly true love. For the lonely heart, the down trodden, the ordinary person - this book offers a meaning to life. Love is the beauty that transends money, power and the corruption of this world.

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Summary: Matchless, wonderful, and alive
Review: This book, considered by most the greatest book ever written, is the best book I have ever read. Don't expect to find any better. I laughed, sweated nervously, and in the end, bawled my eyes out. And I'm a stoic! This story has stood the test of time. The hardcover Modern Library is a well-bound, quality affordable book you'll be proud to own. At under $16, splurge for this edition, it will hold up to the numerous reads you'll give it. Reading this book only once is a sacrelige. Don't dare read it unabridged.

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Summary: The most Touching Novel Ever Written
Review: I read Les Miserables after I saw the opera, and it has inspired in me more than any book I've ever read. I don't believe one could ever find a better novel anywhere. For everyone out there--read this now!! There is a character that will touch everyone, no matter what type of person you are. This novel is easy to relate to, and exciting. It also give some insight to the unwritten history of the revolutions in France during Napolean's time. I recommend strongly to everyone to read this book, and see the opera. It really will effect your life.

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Summary: Probably the best novel of all time!
Review: Never before have I shed a tear after reading a novel. Emotions grip you till the very end, and for a long time after that.

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Summary: Innocence lost, humanity found.
Review: Gripping, powerful, soul-stirring: I cannot say enough about Les Miserables. Every time I open my copy I know that there's a totally new lesson to learn about life waiting for me. Such is the way of the book. If you're not crying by the end, you're crying after you've been done with it for a while because the pure shock of what happened finally hits you. Les Miz is just one of those books that completely shatters your innocence, yet strengthens your soul at the same time. The only other book that I have read that even comes CLOSE to the level of Les Miserables is Night by Elie Wiesel.

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Summary: The Greatest Book In The World!
Review: Jean Val Jean is the best character. He is so honest and that it hurts your heart to see him put in jail and mistreated. He come down from a high position as Father Madeline to claime that he is Jean Val Jean. He saves an innocent man from being tried as guilty. This is a great work of art, Javert is seen as such a bad man, but in the end that all changes. You have to read this Novel, it is the best there will probably ever be.

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Summary: A masterpiece. Read it.
Review: For months I procrastinated in reading Les Miserables. I would pick it up only to put it right back down again, its sheer size, 1400+ pages, crushing my more literary instincts and enveloping me in a fear of "the book that never ends". I had seen the musical and the movie, so why read the book? I could use it as a doorstop. Finally, my insatiable curiosity got the better of me. I had to know the whole story, all the fine details that Hollywood and Broadway left out. Les Miserables as Hugo intended it to be. I was well rewarded for the effort. The book is ten times better than any reproduction on screen or stage. Hugo has woven so many threads into this story, so many characters of such vivid depth, they brought tears and laughter, fear and anger as I traveled back in time to 19th century Paris. It is the characters that make this story so beautiful, though the plot is gripping enough. Jean Valjean, an ex-convict and the central character in the story, is surrounded by myriad characters who, for better or worse, help shape his struggle for redemption. There is Fantine, the virtuous woman turned prostitute aided by Valjean in her final hours; Cosette, Fantine's daughter, the sole source of light in Valjean's life; Javert, the fanatical representative of the law who keeps Valjean on the run for 20 years; Marius, the idealistic youth who finds true love; and finally Thenardier, the sly innkeeper turned criminal whose grasping deviltry creates havoc for Valjean. Add to this a string of secondary characters who engage our hearts no less firmly than the others. I suppose I am a true romantic. I cried when Eponine, Thenardier's daughter and sometime accomplice, gave her life for unrequited love. I laughed as her brother, Gavroche, tripped through the streets of Paris like a miniature Gallic Robin Hood, simultaneously thieving and helping those in need and possessing an uncommon wit for an uneducated street urchin; then, cried again when he died along with the revolutionaries, Enjolras and his gang, whose fanaticism somehow did no damage to their appeal and made their inevitable demise heart-rending. I could go on and on, but there are too many extraordinary characters in this book so, in short, don't use the book as a doorstop. Read it. It is a masterpiece.

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Summary: A beautiful epic by great writer
Review: Although i read the unabridged version of Les Miserables, i am sure my review can go for the abridged as well. This epic satory goes over the perilous and sad life of a truly beautiful character, Jean Valjean. Victor Hugo makes Valjean resemble the ideal human being. He gives almost everything his has to the needy, make's thousands of donations to charities when he becomes a millionaire. Throughout the story he and his adopted daughter, Cosette, are hunted by a cruel policeman, Javert, who wants Valjean for stealing a loaf of bread for his starving family. The story also talks about Cosette and her lover, Marius, who fights in the Revolution. The story also touches on a Inkeeper, Thendaier, who is out to trick Valjean into getting his money. Hugo closes the story out beautifully, in maybe the best epic ever.

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Summary: A classic novel, a modern masterpiece.
Review: I've seen the musical. I'd watch it every day of my life if I could. ( Well, maybe every day for a year. ) Then I must own the soundtrack, right? Wrong: I own every soundtrack. I have the Broadway version, the London version, the 10th Anniversary version, the complete and unabridged, empty-your-pocketbook version, and even the "Highlights From...." I have the poster acquired at Seattle's Fifth Avenue Theater hanging, dry-mounted and framed in glass, this last untinted so it shines forth proudly on an otherwise stark white wall. ( That is, except for the tickets, third row center, orchestra level, laminated and mounted alongside. ) My God, I even have the bag they gave me in which to tote that poster home and the program I was handed as I entered the theater for the performance that is etched in my mind like "2 + 2 = 4" and "Every Good Boy Does Fine." But, of all the silly memoirs I hold dear, none is closer to my heart than the one that started it all: my torn, trampled, water-stained from long excursions in a Calgon-treated bathtub, rubber-banded, paperback copy of Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables." I began this book my freshman year of college and continued it over a 3500 hundred mile trek from New York City to Washington State. I think it took me two weeks to reach my destination thanks to that book; I had to pull to the side of the road each afternoon for hours while I recuperated from a sleepless night spent turning magic pages in my hotel room. My advice: don't read the abridged copy. Read the rich narrative about the man whose heart changed the life of protaganist, Jean ValJean; immerse yourself in Napolean Bonaparte's grueling battle at Waterloo; feel the author's horror when describing the underground septic tunnels of Paris and the world that had grown up within them. These aren't expendible chapters woven around the story; rather, they are an integral part of the novel, immersing the reader in the world of ValJean and, by extension, of Victor Hugo himself. Read the entire, glorious novel. Maybe then I won't seem like such a nut case to you. ( Well, that's a little much to expect, but you will love the experience, anyway.

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Summary: The Best Book Ever Written!!!
Review: Victor Hugo spun a masterful tapestry of a story with Les Miserables. His style of writing, and the pace of the story, and the explosive time period this story takes place in add to the enchanting characters and places mentioned. Overall, I think that Les Miserables is the best book ever written