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Les Miserables (Signet Classics) | 
 enlarge | Author: Victor Hugo
Creators: Lee Fahnestock, Norman Macafee
Publisher: Signet Classics
Category: Book
List Price: $7.95
Buy Used: $2.95
You Save: $5.00 (63%)
New (38) Used (81) Collectible (2) from $2.95
Rating:  259 reviews
Sales Rank: 6681
Format: Unabridged
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 1488
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 6.9 x 4.3 x 2.7
ISBN: 0451525264
Dewey Decimal Number: 843.7
UPC: 705703008376
EAN: 9780451525260
ASIN: 0451525264
Publication Date: March 3, 1987
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
In this story of the trials of the peasant Jean Valjean--a man unjustly imprisoned, baffled by destiny, and hounded by his nemesis, the magnificently realized, ambiguously malevolent police detective Javert--Hugo achieves the sort of rare imaginative resonance that allows a work of art to transcend its genre.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 254 more reviews...
 Excruciatingly long-winded November 15, 2008
War & Peace seemed 1000 pages too short. This book, unfortunately seemed 1000 pages too long. Victor, do we really need 4 full chapters about the sewers of Paris and the poetic side of excrement? And are we really supposed to believe that of all the thugs, thieves, murderers and other scoundrels haunting Paris, the one guy Inspector Javert is really intent on capturing is the guy who stole a loaf of bread 20-30 years before? Yeah, I get it--the French legal system was unfair, but c'mon--this is ridiculous.
Stunning October 25, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I absolutely loved this book! I bought it and read it multiple times afterwards. I watched all the movie versions, but none are as good as the book. The plot is so good! I love the character Jean Valjean and his transformation from being a criminal to being saintlike. I read the book in about a day, and suggest that everyone else should read it in one sitting too. Javert is one of my favorite characters along with Valjean as well. I recommend it to everyone, and strongly feel anyone who skips reading it is making a huge mistake!
 Overrated but good October 10, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo, is the type of work that is almost beyond the measure of excellence or not. Hugo so indulgent, so excessive, that the book becomes almost otherworldly, an edifice out in an ether of its own, subject to its own literary rules. It is simple in narrative construction, but byzantinely complex in the curlicues of detail. It is such a diverse work that it is almost a cosmos unto itself, apart from the time and reality of mortal men and writers. If there was ever an over-the-top work of prose that was the equivalent of a Walt Whitman song it is this work. Then, again, I have used the qualifier almost, because while the novel has quite a number of excellent moments, it has just as many, or more, bad moments- and I mean horrifically bad examples of writing; writing so bad that to believe it could belong to a `classic' or a `masterpiece' of the Western Canon boggles the mind....Les Miserables is one of the most unique works of art in human literature, but that does not necessitate its greatness. Crime And Punishment, published just four years later, in 1866, while still suffering from some of the naive-te and caricaturization that Hugo's novel suffers from, clearly represents a significant step forward toward modern thought, as it is a much psychologically richer book that limns its coeval Russian counterparts to a greater internal degree than Hugo was capable of. It is shorn of the Capital R Romance that bogs down much of Les Miserables. Its action is mostly interior, spread over a relatively short period, while Les Miserables' action is spread over decades and often leaves its characters abruptly hanging, to take a more deific view of the human panorama. Crime And Punishment's view is microscopic, while Les Miserables' is macroscopic, to the point of losing its way far too often in the grand, as its main characters flounder. That's why Hugo's novel is three times the length of Dostoevsky's, and would fall apart if not propped up by the action-driven narrative. Crime and Punishment's narrative, by contrast, is driven not by action, but reaction.
It is interesting to note that not many published literary critics- Helen Vendler, Lionel Trilling, Harold Bloom, nor Edmund Wilson- write of Les Miserables in the awed way they approach other works of that age- be it Crime And Punihment, Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, Melville's Moby-Dick, or Twain's Huckleberry Finn. It's as if it's tacitly accepted, as a way station between the pre-modern and the modern novel; one far more dependent upon its entertainment than intellectual value. This is the correct assessment to give the book. Les Miserables, to a modern eye, reads far more like a gay, cavalier farce, or outright comedy, than a serious work of realistic fiction in the A Tree Grows In Brooklyn or Embers vein.
Les Miserables is a good novel, one might even call it a very good novel, and one that I `liked', but it's nowhere near great, despite its bulk meaning it has as much actual great writing as some great books a tenth its size. Yet, one simply cannot pretend all the bad writing does not exist- there's far too much of it, and its no comfort to know that editing a century and a half ago was capable of being as derelict as it routinely is today, even granting the glory of its Whitmanian excesses.
Even better than I'd thought October 1, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I've always been familiar with this story because of the broadway musical, but had never actually read it, until recently. It was the most moving, brilliant, wonderful story I've read in so long. And even being familiar with it, there was nothing lost, because as you'd expect, not all of the plot lines in this amazing novel made it into the play (shocking, I know). It was incredible. Considering it was dauntingly long, I feel like I read it in no time at all. A must read!
The Genius Without a Brain September 21, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Hugo is a man of contradictions: royalist and republican, chaste and amorous, defender and provocateur. It is sometimes difficult to pin down Hugo's politics, and the man paints with a broad brush, but one thing is certain: Victor Hugo is a creative genius of the highest level.
The pen isn't necessarily mightier than the sword. Hugo's pen, however, most certainly is.
Consider why you enjoy reading books. If you read in order to meet larger-than-life characters dealing with profoundly complex and emotional situations (along with stirring historical digressions), this book is for you.
Victor Hugo has created one of the most beautiful novels you will ever read. This is as good as it possibly gets.
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