Rusu Paisie, CAE summer 2022, book review

Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables is a five-volume historical novel set in the
nineteenth century France. It is a breathtaking lecture, addressing subjects like
love, poverty, sacrifice or courage. However, the main point of the book
revolves around keeping the human dignity in the most challenging and
inhumane of times.
The suspense of the book builds up as the reader gets to know poignant
characters from all the social layers of modern-era Paris in all their startling
complexity. There is no absolute good or bad neither in the macabre and
gruesome world of the underground sewer canals, nor in the luxurious
apartments of the rich, instead everyone is fighting for their survival, willing to
go over other people’s corpses in the process. The evocative scenes of the
rebellions and the clashes between the barricade defenders and the
governmental forces made a lasting impression on me, the writer managing to
express in words what a true devotion to a cause looks like.
Les Misérables is by no means a page-turner, the events and characters
having multiple sides worth analyzing and meditating about, although it is rich
in chapters with intense action and breathtaking plot twists. This novel
awakened my interest in French culture and history by showing it in a
compelling way, from the perspective of multiple regular people, a different
approach than that of the regular history books.
I thoroughly recommend this book as an in-depth case study, if you have
the time and will to be transcended to the lugubrious Paris of the nineteenth
century by the words of an incredibly talented author.

Grammar – 4/5
Vocabulary – 4.5/5
Coherence – 5/5
Communicative Achievement – 5/5
Style – 5/5
GREAT WORK!

Checker – Alexandra Artamonova