I fell behind.

I originally intended to post these reviews of Les Mis every month as I read it. Not only did I fall way behind my book club, but I also fell way behind on my reviews. I’m sorry if you were eagerly anticipating the next one.

However, given the amount of views each of these posts get, I don’t really think anybody was eagerly anticipating this.

I’ll summarize and review the last three volumes of Les Mis, and then give my closing thoughts on this masterpiece of a book as a whole. Read my reviews of Volume 1 and Volume 2, especially Volume 1 because lots of the “themes” I talk about there are instrumental to the rest of the book, too.

Volume III: Marius

Jean Valjean has never been the viewpoint character the whole way through the book. The first fourteen chapters are spent on the Bishop of Digne and his life. However, since then, Jean Valjean’s actions, if nothing else, have been the focus of the narrative. Jean Valjean meets the Bishop. We see Fontaine, and then Fontaine moves to Jean Valjean’s town and we resume Jean’s point of view. We spend time with Cosette in Volume II, but very quickly return to Jean Valjean once he crosses paths with Cosette. The long divergences, Hugo’s rants on French society and world history, are made to intersect with Jean Valjean again.

Volume III is the first book that ditches Jean Valjean almost entirely. Marius is the new viewpoint character. Tangents spin off of him rather than spinning off of events in Jean Valjean’s life, although like the previous chapters eventually Jean does resurface.

Book I is a study of Paris, its people, and its evolution over time. Book II studies Marius’s grandfather, Monseigneur Gillenormand and his life through the revolutions. Book III sees the young life of Marius. Marius’s mother was Gillenormand’s daughter, who married a Colonel in Napoleon’s army. The man was made a baron before almost dying at the Battle of Waterloo. He was saved by a mysterious Thenardier, the horrible thief we know so well from Books I and II, who saved a mysterious man in the Battle of Waterloo. His wife dying in childbirth, he sends the baby back to the grandfather for an education, vowing never to see his grandson. Marius finally learns of his father once his father has died and has his world shocked. He leaves his grandfather and rebuilds a life in Paris.

Book IV diverges to describe a new group of Marius’s friends, educated revolutionaries who are all larger-than-life. Book V sees Marius take voluntary poverty and a strict routine, distancing himself from these revolutionary friends. Suddenly, in Book VI, Marius sees a beautiful young girl under the care of a mysterious Monseigneur Leblanc (obviously Cosette and Jean Valjean, now out into the world ten years after being in the convent). He falls in love as he sees her in the gardens.

Book VII is another divergence, where Victor Hugo describes the depths of the human misery: the ruffians, the poor, those who in the 1830s were the worst of the worst criminals, the dregs of society. This is important because book VIII brings everything together so far.

In Book VIII, Marius’s next door neighbor attempts to con him through his daughter Eponine, who, through hideous in her poverty, appears to have a crush on Marius. Marius gives her some money instead. However, he then overhears the man in the midst of another con, trying to fool a certain Leblanc out of his money. Marius goes to the police, meeting a certain Inspector Javert to alert him to neighbor and his plan. Later that night, Leblanc returns, planning to help the poor man, but the gang of ruffians described in Book VII corners him. The neighbor admits his name to Leblanc, recognizing him. The neighbor is Thenardier. Leblanc is Jean Valjean. And Javert is around the corner, waiting for Marius to give a signal to tell the police to come in.

Marius’s father told Marius that he owes a debt of life to Thenardier. Marius loves Leblanc’s daughter. Who will he choose? It’s one of the most thrilling moments of the book so far in a book full of thrilling moments. So Marius does not give a signal, but the police come in anyways, just in time for the cornered Jean Valjean to escape and for Marius to run away. Thenardier and his ruffians are captured, and Jean Valjean has slipped through Javert’s grasp once again–though he does not know it was him.

Volume IV: The Idyl in the Rue Plumet and the Epic in the Rue Saint-Denis

Volume IV is about two roads where two major events took place. Book I tells of what leads to the second of the two roads. It describes the revolutionary air underneath the reign of Louis Philippe, the last king of France. In 1830, Charles X, who was made king after Napoleon fell, was overthrown in the July Revolution. Louis Philippe took his place, a philosopher king who did back the sentiments of the early revolution but did not like the course it eventually went down. While Victor Hugo sees him as a half-decent compromise, many people did not; and so until 1832, another revolution brewed, the June Rebellion. This is the famous revolution that Les Mis is known for, and it takes up the whole second half of this volume and the first half of the next volume.

However, we have to go back to the other important road first. In Book II, Eponine finds Marius a few weeks after that fateful confrontation. Her parents now in jail, Eponine gives Marius the address to Cosette and Jean Valjean, loving Marius too much not to help him, but still in pain over helping Marius find his love.

Book III recounts Jean Valjean and Cosette’s life since the convent. Cosette has grown up, but not so fully as to know love yet. She “fools around” as Marius spies her in the garden, but she doesn’t know the man’s name and doesn’t fully know love. Jean Valjean notices, and so they move again. Cosette is unhappy, a first change in their life together.

In Book IV, Jean Valjean returns from his encounter with Thenardier. He’s wounded, and Cosette takes care of him. This helps her forget the man she flirted with, and they return to their normal life after some months. But in Book V, Cosette finds in the garden outside their home on an abandoned street corner, Rue Plumet, a letter. The letter first terrifies her. But she reads it. And it’s from Marius, and Marius writes such a stirring commentary on love that Cosette falls in love all over again. They meet up in the garden late at night, and Marius and her are in love.

We cut away from all this to Gavroche in Book VI. He is the younger son of Thenardier, only a baby in Volume II. He was abandoned by his family long before the events of the fateful night where his father was captured. He loves playing in the streets. He finds two abandoned children, who turn out to be his younger brothers from the Thenardier’s who they conned out to a family who believed they were the sons of a nobleman. He cares for them and we see a window into the life of destitution once again. Thenardier and his ruffians end up escaping from prison, with the coincidental help of Gavroche passing by in the middle of the night. What follows in Book VII is an entire expose on French Slang and the nature of slang in languages, the language of poverty that creates a complicated and ever-changing grammar and vocabulary to give expression to the misery of the poor.

Book VIII returns to the bliss of Marius until Jean Valjean makes plans to leave with Cosette to England. It’s June 3rd; the June Rebellion will take place on the 5th and the 6th. Marius freaks, scratching his address into Cosette’s wall and running to his old grandfather to ask permission to marry Cosette. Meanwhile, Eponine guards the Rue Plumet from Thenardier and his gang, doing it out of love for Marius even though she knows he’s visiting his lover. The next day, Jean Valjean sees the scratched address and believes he is being followed. He plans to move out to a new apartment at once with Cosette and make to England from there.

All are making assumptions; all are wrong. While Marius is so offended by his grandfather he leaves in anger, his grandfather actually has loved Marius the whole time, and though he knows they politically disagree he loves his grandson. Jean Valjean assumes; Marius assumes about Eponine; all are making mistakes.

Book X describes the circumstances that led to the June Rebellion. Book XI places the characters on the chessboard, including the ever-fun Gavrouche and the lovesick Eponine who takes a letter written by Cosette intended for Marius. In Book XII, the rebellion breaks out, and streets are barricaded in the famous structures associated with Les Mis.

In despair upon finding Cosette gone, Marius wanders his way into the revolution in Book XIII. Book XIV describes the back-and-forth of the battle on the barricade. Javert tries to break into the barricade as a spy, but Marius recognizes him. It’s looking bad, especially when Eponine dies. She had found her way to the barricade too. She saved Marius’s life by putting her hand in front of a rifle and blowing off her hand. Marius finds her, dying, and realizes for the first time how she felt about him. She gives him Cosette’s stolen letter. Finding out Gavrouche is her brother, he sends Gavrouche with a letter to Cosette, hoping to save another Thenardier’s life.

In Book XV, the unthinkable happens. Not only does Jean Valjean intercept Gavrouche, but he then returns inside and finds Cosette’s copy of the letter she wrote for Marius. His life falls apart. He leaves, heading to the barricade to do who knows what.

Volume V: Jean Valjean

Book I of Volume V is the longest of the entire novel. It recounts the end of the battle within the barricade. All of the characters we met, Marius’s friends, die. Gavrouche is killed. Javert is about to be executed, but Jean Valjean spares him, letting him go while the others think he is dead. The wall is finally taken in the most intense fighting in the novel, extremely harrowingly described by Victor Hugo, who was there when this real fighting took place in 1832. Marius is convinced he is about to die.

However, Book II is another digression. Jean Valjean actually rescued Marius and made his way into the vast sewers of Paris, a thousand year old intestine of a city that tells its own story about the world above. In Book III, Jean Valjean is angry that Marius took away his happiness from his life with his “daughter” but through his anger realizes this is an innocent man who only wanted to make his daughter happy. He in a disgusting adventure travels through the sewers until he is kept from getting out of a grate. How does he escape? Not recognizing him and believing he is carrying a dead man, Thenardier lets him escape… right into the clutches of Javert, who pursued Thenardier after escaping from the barricade.

In a moment of truth, Javert lets Jean Valjean take Marius to his grandfather. Then, he lets Jean Valjean go.

In Book IV, Javert has his own crisis of conscience, just as Jean Valjean had in Volume I and Marius in Volume III. He is stuck in the middle of a contradiction. Jean Valjean, a just man. Jean Valjean, former convict. He has no choice. He lets Jean Valjean go, then kills himself by throwing himself off a bridge.

In Book V, Marius reawakens, fully doted on by his grandfather. He still owes his father’s life to this Thenardier and his life to the mysterious man who was spotted saving him from the sewers, but he is happy like never before. He marries Cosette, and their happiness seems complete.

However, in Book VI, we see Jean Valjean have a final crisis of conscience. By being a former convict, he will always bring the taint of sin into his child’s life. By lying not to profit Cosette but only to profit himself, he is committing a greater sin. He has to be worthy of what the Bishop of Digne bought him for. “I buy you back from perdition, and I buy you for God.” Jean Valjean cannot do otherwise.

He decides he will reveal that portion of his life to Marius, without revealing any of the good that came from it in Book VII. He gives away all his money to Cosette and him, and then consigns himself to visiting Cosette once an evening. In Book VIII, Marius, believing Jean Valjean’s bluntness, allows Jean to visit but progressively blots him out of Cosette’s life while refusing to use the perceived ill-gotten money he was given. Book IX begins with Jean Valjean fading away, without any of the life of the girl that made his life liveable again.

However, a twist. Thenardier, trying to get his last bit of money from a Baron, comes to him with information: the father of the woman you married? He is an ex-convict! Also, he faked being Monseigneur Madeleine, a wealthy jewelry maker! He probably killed Madeleine too! Finally, he is a murderer; he carried a man through the mud of the sewers, who was dead! Give me money, Baron, I deserve it! Finally, though, Thenardier is outwitted. Marius realizes that Jean Valjean is not a sinner; he is a saint made perfect in dutiful suffering. He pays Thenardier an exorbitant sum of money for saving his father, not for this information. He and Cosette rush to Jean Valjean’s side, who dies only a few minutes after they arrive. He is overjoyed at seeing his “daughter” and “son” one last time. He sees the Bishop of Digne and Jesus himself as he falls into sleep for the last time, happy. He had no need of beating himself to a pulp, punishing himself for every evil in his past and every anger he had at Marius. For Marius and Cosette, he is perfect. He is divine. He is like God.

What a Masterpiece

This book is absolutely massive. As you could probably tell from this review and my other reviews, Victor Hugo isn’t writing just a novel. He is writing the story of a people, bottling his philosophy and his ideas of history into a story that he believes captures the essence of human nature. While in Volume 1 review I discussed how I disagreed with some of Victor Hugo’s philosophy, I can’t deny that his story encapsulates humanity.

He discusses religion, cities, language, fights, people, places, and events, bouncing back and forth between the fictional particular he has created which describes the nonfiction broadness. He is a master of philosophy, knowledgable in culture and people, and unafraid to display his version of reality. If you, like me, disagree with him fundamentally–that it is not just society that corrupts man, but that humankind is in itself corrupt–you can’t help but be captured by his vision. It’s a vision of the world and society and progress that pulls you in with his beautiful words and description.

But even more so, even if the philosophy doesn’t interest you and the diversions feel like they don’t matter at all (which they do matter and you’re wrong if you think they don’t–but that’s ok we all make mistakes), his story is amazing.

This is a guy at the peak of his storytelling craft. The amount of difficult situations he is able to put his characters into as they interact with one another is astounding. Every moral conundrum builds on the previous one. Every chapter spent ruminating and dwelling is time well spent. The characters always act believably in the situations they’re put in; you never feel like a character is breaking who they are just to fit the drama. When Jean Valjean decides to tell Marius, you believe he would. You know he would. You know there is no other way.

The story is constantly creatively outdoing itself, from the big events like the bloody description of the battle in the Rou Saint-Denis, to the little events like the description of Marius and Cosette’s young love. That description in particular is one of my favorites of the entire novel, as I don’t know how but Victor Hugo perfectly encapsulates how it feels to be in love for the first time, even as he waxes poetical about womanly chastity and virgin purity that might fall on deaf or even offended ears in modern society. Even if you don’t buy what Hugo is selling–I certainly don’t believe many of his opinions on the human condition–it’s a wonder to behold a master at his craft.

The master is interesting, too. I listened to the Penguin Classics version, which includes a lengthy introduction to Victor Hugo’s life and story. The audiobook version read this “introduction” at the end because it spoiled large portions of the novel. He was a pro-monarchy republican, a verbal opponent of Napoleon III exiled for treason, while shockingly fighting on the side of the police in the June Rebellion. He hated chaos and disorder, and found that revolution could easily be riots and that there was a thin line in the sand between the two. A serial womanizer, he was also a high-ranking politician under Louis Phillipe.

His story is very similar to Marius’s; he was from a wealthy family, yet his mother married an army sergeant made a Baron by Napoleon, who survived Waterloo but left Victor to be raised by his grandfather. He traveled from monarchist to Bonapartist to extreme Republican and then back again in the middle, then back to the extreme again. The “Society of the ABC,” Marius’s friends, are basically just different versions of himself in different times of his life and in different contexts. Many of the actual participators in the June Rebellion were working class, not educated lawyers and philosophers.

But this fictional version of history he created, including his carefully researched but ultimately incorrect account of the Battle of Waterloo, is the one that stuck with France and England for generations. Bienvenu de Miollis is the inspiration for the Bishop of Digne; Eugene Francois Vidocq, Jean Valjean; various piecemeal events such as the imprisoning of a man for stealing a loaf of bread. Victor Hugo saved a prostitute from being assaulted by police; the defense he gave to the police is recounted in Jean Valjean’s statements to the Javert. You can do the research and find inspiration for almost every event that happens in the novel.

All of these “happened,” but never really happened. Les Miserables was the bestselling novel of its year (1862) in France and England, and for several years after that too. It is one of the most popular stories of all time because it tells a great story, wrapped and cloaked and informed and bedazzled and founded on an all-encompassing vision for humanity.

Conclusion

While it may not be my favorite book I have ever read, it is probably the best and greatest book I have ever read. It is the culmination of a man’s views on the world told in a story that will move any heart. It is Victor Hugo’s world you live in for over 600,000 words, over 1000 pages; for me, over 50 hours of listening on 1.4x speed.

It is worth every page, letter, word, and second of the experience.