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    Les Miserables
    Les Miserables
    Les Miserables
    Audiobook (abridged)2 hours

    Les Miserables

    Written by Victor Hugo

    Narrated by Michael Jayston

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    Les Miserables is part thrilling narrative and part social document of life in early 19th-century France. With Valjean, the reader descends into a human hell where suffering and injustice are a way of life. Through his characters, Hugo graphically details the plight of the wretched and the vulnerable. He writes with insight and passion, like that equally great 19th-century commentator and novelist, Charles Dickens. But regardless of its grim subject, Hugo's book is one of hope, a means of proclaiming his belief in the innate goodness of humanity, despite all.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe Copyright Group
    Release dateJan 1, 2014
    ISBN9781780003221
    Author

    Victor Hugo

    Victor Hugo (1802-1885) is one of the most well-regarded French writers of the nineteenth century. He was a poet, novelist and dramatist, and he is best remembered in English as the author of Notre-Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame) (1831) and Les Misérables (1862). Hugo was born in Besançon, and became a pivotal figure of the Romantic movement in France, involved in both literature and politics. He founded the literary magazine Conservateur Littéraire in 1819, aged just seventeen, and turned his hand to writing political verse and drama after the accession to the throne of Louis-Philippe in 1830. His literary output was curtailed following the death of his daughter in 1843, but he began a new novel as an outlet for his grief. Completed many years later, this novel became Hugo's most notable work, Les Misérables.

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    Reviews for Les Miserables

    4.5/5

    4,841 ratings161 reviews

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    • 5/5
      This is probably one of the best known pieces of literature in the entire world, made even more famous by the musical. Victor Hugo has created a timeless masterpiece that never fails to captivate me every time I read it.Jean Valjean is so hungry and desperate that he steals a loaf of bread. Sentenced to a punishment which is vastly disproportionate to the crime, Valjean finally manages to get released but his old criminal ways soon return and the authorities soon regard him as a repeat criminal. He is persuaded by a bishop to become a good man but the authorities are still trying to track him down. No matter what good deeds Valjean does to atone for the past, he still has the police pursuing him.An epic tale set against the backdrop of the French Revolution, this is a book you MUST read.Highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      This book is a challenge to get through, even in audiobook form. I had a basic familiarity with the story of Les Mis?rables from the musical of the same name.The depth of Jean Valjean's character and circumstances is so much greater than could ever be remotely given justice by the movie or any musical representation.I would recommend this for anyone who is in love with the story as presented by the musical. The original version of the story has a completely different dimension than any 2-3 hour production can present.The unabridged format is a bit unwieldy, but provides some measure of context, considering how far displaced we are from the original setting of the story.
    • 3/5
      Victor Hugo must have been getting paid by the word cos this book was wayyyy to long. He went well overboard on descriptive crap that added nothing to the storyline. The only good thing about the book was that it filled in some of the blanks of the movie. It just reinforces my idea that the French speak too much and say very little.
    • 4/5
      I originally read this when I was 13 years old, and have finally revisited it at 50. How strange that it remains a 4 star read for me. Not because it looks the same, but because I have traded in my youthful set of issues with this tale for a completely different set.

      I will not bore you with my youthful perceptions. Instead, if you are so foolish as to continue reading, I will bore you with my perceptions as an old fart:

      Hugo did an excellent job of conveying how selfish and judgmental people were in France during the early 1800's. IMO that capacity has always existed in humans. It's something that every parent battles to eradicate from their own children. Sometimes it feels like there is not a single day when this war is not being waged. Well, parenthood is not for the faint of heart.

      This author also leans heavily upon religion as a redeeming force for mankind. And I fully agree that religion can be a great force for good. But IMO, religion also happens to be a construct that we humans invented for that very purpose. Of course, the construct did not have to be an actual being. Philosophy, or even science, would also do. So long as the constructed system fully embodied mankind's need for the universe to make sense and to be a worthwhile place for us to live together.

      P.S. Please accept my apologies if this review has offended you. I like to imagine that I live in a world where diverse opinions are allowed. But I surely do appreciate that hearing an alien view of reality can feel like a personal attack.
    • 5/5
      "Les Miserables" by Victor HugoMy thoughts and comments:I finished "Les Miserables" as part of the Le Salon group read yesterday morning and, (attempting to keep it spoiler free), yes, this is indeed a book that I loved and will read again over the years. Hugo has a way about writing that almost made me feel like he was attempting to lure my head from the story at times, but if so, he sadly failed. He tends to do what my mum calls "going off on a tangent". He gets caught up in a netherwind and is off and running with it for a while but then here he brings it back to the story line and yes, it usually had some little/big something to do with one or the other of the characters, including Paris.By the way, this is the best book with Paris as the backdrop that I have ever read.So I really liked it; I cared very much about most of the characters. I think that the only character I actually detested was Thenardier. I liked how Hugo built his characters so they were multifacted and layered and not just one dimensional. And he took the time to do it, which not all authors do; sometimes all parts of a character are described at once. But not here. Here, we actually got to see the growth (to the bad or the good) of the characters.Thank you Le Salon, for organizing this read. For me, it was a reading experience of a lifetime for me. I highly recommend Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables".
    • 4/5
      Long, but worth reading.
    • 5/5
      Umm, so...as with War and Peace, how the heck do you review a novel that is part of the fabric of Western society; a book that has been around so long and was written by an author so esteemed as to have a reputation that proceeds the reading? Yeah, I don't know either.I will say that I assigned a one-star deduction (no, I am not the Russian judge, though I am definitely partial to Russian literature, but I digress) for two reasons: a) some of the commentary, while relevant to the plot, meandered longer than was interesting - in most cases - for my liking. This surprised me. I like reading history and observations of society, plus I am generally a curious cat. Somehow, Hugo wasn't holding my attention in a lot of the passages that were away from the main action of the story. Reason b) all of the coincidences used to advance the plot were hard to swallow. I will say that when I come across coincidences while I am reading fiction, it bugs the crap out of me. I mean really, really annoys me. Hugo, in using this device, managed to not wholly annoy me. So, The main story was kick-ass and in these sections I was hard pressed to put the book down. Unlike Tolstoy, in War and Peace, I was not so riveted during the other chapters of the story. Sigh. Since Hugo is awesome - apparently that is what is says on his headstone: "Awesome" - I will take the blame for having some fault during the reading of Les Misérables. I'm still not gonna give back that deducted start, though, Hugo!
    • 5/5
      It's long but well worth the read. I consider this my favorite classic novel.
    • 5/5
      Certainly one of the greatest things ever written.
    • 4/5
      I didn't realize I was listening to the abridged version of the book until I saw that the page number was supposed to be over a thousand pages, which would have been impossible in a audiobook of 13 hours. Once again I have been mislead - the first time when I read The Count of Monte Cristo abridged. And yet I did not feel as if I were missing pieces of the story. Perhaps because I went into this having seen the movie adaption and the musical play? I'm not sure I have the patience to go through another 700 pages of Hugo, to tell the truth, but I've heard the experience of the unabridged book is wonderful. I will take everyone's word on it. I haven't decided if I like the book as much as I do because I loved the play and movie first or not but regardless this is a classic I enjoyed reading. There's a charm to watching Jean-Valjean redeem himself but yet is always just human in his emotions.
    • 3/5
      This got so much better towards the end. 3.5 stars is a better fit.
    • 3/5
      Meh. The story as a whole is a good story, but there are reasons that abridged versions exist. Victor Hugo adds a great deal of French history and infrastructure to the book that has absolutely nothing to do with the plot. It's almost as though he's trying to prove himself as a legitimate French historian. But, removing that, the story is actually a good love story. It also has the right amount of conflict between Javert and Jean Valjean. The story doesn't stray into strange territory, and Hugo is able to keep all the stories moving well, enough to keep the reader intrigued.
    • 5/5
      Les Miserables is one of the longest books I've ever read (and I've read a lot of long books) and as someone with very little knowledge of French history, it was also one of the most challenging. Jean Valjean has just been released from prison after nineteen years (he had been sentenced to five years for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving family, and then a further fourteen years for his attempts to escape). As an ex-convict, Valjean finds himself rejected by everybody he approaches until the kindly Bishop Myriel takes him in and gives him shelter for the night. However, Valjean repays him by stealing his silverware. When the police catch him and take him back to the bishop's home, the bishop tells them they've made a mistake - he had given the silverware to Valjean as a gift. The bishop's simple gesture of kindness has a profound effect on Valjean, filling him with the determination to be a better person.After establishing himself as a successful factory owner and becoming mayor of Montreuil-sur-Mer, Valjean promises a dying woman that he will take care of her daughter, Cosette. The rest of the book follows Valjean's attempts to escape the investigations of Inspector Javert and to build a new life for himself and Cosette. Along the way we meet a gang of criminals, a group of revolutionary students, and a greedy innkeeper called Thenardier.Most of the characters are very well developed and Hugo spends a considerable amount of time introducing us to them. However, I didn't find the characters of Marius and Cosette very interesting, despite their central roles in the book - I thought some of the secondary characters were much stronger, such as the street urchin Gavroche and the Thenardiers' eldest daughter Eponine.I almost gave this book four stars rather than five, because of all the lengthy digressions on the Battle of Waterloo, life in a convent, the July Revolution of 1830, the Paris sewer system etc. Although these pages are often interesting and informative and contain some beautiful writing, they have very little direct relevance to the plot and interrupt the flow of the story. However, this is really the only negative thing I can say about the book. It's worth perservering through all the social commentary, politics and history to get to the actual story itself - and the wonderful, moving, thought-provoking, suspenseful story is why I finally decided to give the book a five star rating.
    • 3/5
      This is a wonderful story, but Hugo goes off on too many unnecessary digressions. Long sections on slang, the history of a convent, the construction of the Paris sewer system, etc., really don't add to the tale. I'm glad I read it, but I don't think I would recommend it to others.
    • 4/5
      Hard to capture briefly, a romance and a novel of human transformations from bad to good. A challenging read with digressions into French history, urban structure of Paris and justice.
    • 3/5
      Formidabel epos, maar zeer heterogeen samengesteld met soms wervelende of aandoenlijke stukken, soms saaie beschouwingen. Vooral de figuur van Jean Valjean overheerst het geheel, imponerend, maar overdreven donker-dreigend. Typisch stijlproc?d?: beschrijving van een actie of karakter, daarna opengetrokken naar algemene beschouwing over kleine of grote zaken. Zeer zwakke vrouwenfiguren. Marius is de enige figuur die echt een evolutie doormaakt en menselijke trekken vertoont.
    • 5/5
      I loved this book. I was expecting something somewhere between Trollope's extraordinary writing and Zola's wonderful stories - and I got it! Great literature indeed, and what a character Jean Valjean is.

      His story is almost biblical, one of redemption. One who travels the path from evil to good with scarcely a stumble but many an obstruction along the way. Hugo uses the book, much as Tolstoy liked to do, to expound his personal philosophy and also the condition of the peasants, les miserables.

      Good, excellent, as the book was, I am left with one question, how come Valjean never recognised Thénardier no matter how many times he met him?

      If you like classics and sagas, its a good holiday book. Start before you go, read it on the plane, a little by the pool and when lying on the beach, and then when you get home, there will still be more to read about these people who are your friends and family now.

    • 5/5
      The novel's most significant theme is metamorphosis, both in terms of the individual and society. The main character, Jean Valjean, changes from a misogynistic and possibly violent ex-con to a man capable of heroic love and self-sacrifice. Love is the power that changes him. The bishop of Digne shows Valjean unwavering affection, confiding in him with his life and doing everything in his power. Valjean is inspired by this example to start a completely new life. He experiences moral tests, such as sacrificing his life to save Marius, who loves Cosette and whom Valjean despises, and learns to put others before himself as he raises Cosette as his own daughter. Generally speaking, the employees and students on the are admirable. This is a classic that bears reading and rereading. Among the top favorites of literature in translation in my library.
    • 5/5
      I briefly toyed with taking off a half star for all of the lengthy tangents Hugo employs, most of which do little or nothing to advance the story, but damn, the book is so so so good anyway, I just couldn't do it. It took me 2 and 1/2 months to read it, but I was barreling through the last few hundred pages as Hugo brought all of the different threads together and created a crescendo so compelling and beautiful that it was virtually impossible to put down. There are a number of classics that I do not like because they lack coherent plots or have zero likeable characters. That was not the case with this one. I ached for Jean Valjean and everything he went through. The characters were so rich ... the internal dialogue of Javert at the end was a masterclass in and of itself ... and the plot was literally sublime. I am not a religious person, but I could still appreciate the religious overtones in the book and not feel preached at. Just so so so so so good.
    • 3/5
      Listened to the audiobook version of this classic novel and it took me quite a while to get through the entire book. I was fascinated by the descriptions of society still grappling with its recent history of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, but there's a lot more to this novel. I think I need to return to this book again, but to actually read the print version, as the audiobook didn't really work for me in this particular case.
    • 4/5
      The language is gorgeous, if at times dark:"Fairy tales all: Goblins for children; God for men. No, our tomorrow is night. Beyond the grave, all are only equal nothings.” “This book is a drama whose first character is the Infinite. Man is the second.”“Being in possession of the false aim of life, happiness, how we forget the true aim, duty!” (Though the novel is immensely quotable, this line is probably my favorite.)
    • 5/5
      I head the people sing and it was glorious. It was a long read for me 1,300 pages translated by Christine Donougher but she made it simple for English speakers. I enjoyed the characters, the plot, and bits of French history especially the parts about Emperor Napoleon I and King Louis Philippe I. Interesting too that Victor Hugo wrote most of Les Misérables in exile on the islands of Guernsey and Jersey for publicly being an outspoken critic of Emperor Napoleon III.
    • 4/5
      Summary: A massive book by a French patriot about people, humanity society and philosophy.
      He uses an epic story of one mans redemption to illustrate and navigate a lot of these ideas.

      Things I liked:

      Characters:

      I loved the characters like Val Jean and Gav Roche. Fantine and Javert and many other besides.

      While they may have been a little unrealistic at times (extreme people in extreme circumstances certainly not like anyone I really know or have met); they ooze poetry (extreme ideas counter pointed within themselves or against each other). Just thinking about the contrast of Val Jean and Javert right now gives me goose bumps.

      I also really liked the way he would introduce a small-ish character into the story, use them and let them go again.

      Scope:


      Hugo will set up a character hundreds of pages earlier for a beautiful payoff later on (for example the Sister Simplice who never lies (not even to spare Fantine the pain not having her daughter,
      who then lies twice to Javert to protect Val Jean. Other characters like this include the horticulturist who dies waving the flag at the barricade and Thenadier who weaves his way through the entire story .

      Things I thought could be improved:

      Informational Sections:

      I'm a bit in two minds, but basically I think a lot of the 'non-fiction' sections could have potentially been moved to an appendix at the back. It seems you'd just be getting to a really good bit of the plot and then STOP !!! I'd be treated to 140 pages on Waterloo or the sewersof Paris (their historical antecedents etc). It's been pointed out to me and I agree that this information does add to the plot, but I still think a bit of editing could have tightened things up a bit.

      Name dropping:

      I get the impression Victor Hugo had read very widely and learnt about a lot of things and events because he must have mentioned just about everyone of them in this book. I got probably about 30% of them and found all the classical references a bit over the top sometimes.

      Highlight:

      For me the section when Javert confronts Val Jean by Fantine's bedside gave me goosebumps.


      Jean Valjean, armed with his bar of iron, walked slowly up to Fantine's couch. When he arrived there he turned and said to Javert, in a voice that was barely audible:-

      "I advise you not to disturb me at this moment."

      One thing is certain, and that is that Javert trembled.
    • 2/5
      AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!I can't take it any more. Every day a new sermon about religion or politics or some other topic that he absolutely beat to death. I don't care enough about the story to endure any more of that.
    • 5/5
      My pick for 2021 PopSugar Reading Challenge prompt #41: The longest book (by pages) on your TBR

      After one month, I finally finished it few minutes before midnight (last night)! If it's not for the reading challenge, I'd have postponed reading it indefinitely. For a classic, it's the typical book that I really dread to read. I'm not going to reread this unless I'm held at gun-point and it's life-threatening. It's dense and full of philosophical ramblings that swerve from the main direction of the plot. Thanks to the audiobooks and text-to-speech features, I managed to read it in a shorter time. If I used my eyes only , I'd have stared at one sentence in five minutes.

      The thing I love about it is how the narrator engaged the readers by reminding us of the previously mentioned instances that lead to the situation of that scene. Will definitely watch any--or all-- adaptations of Les Miserables, including "Cosette". It's an anime adaptation by World Masterpiece Theater.
    • 4/5
      After 1200 pages all's well that ends well. Great story.
    • 5/5
      A classic novel that deserves its place in the pantheon. Its plot is a little bit melodramatic for modern tastes — relying far too much on improbable coincidences — but the core of the conflict is as solid today as it was in the 1860s. The characters of Jean Valjean and Javert are dynamic and compelling (Marius and Cosette perhaps somewhat less so). Most of all, however, this is a brilliant wordsmith at the heights of his powers. Even in translation, Hugo is compulsively readable, with well-turned phrases on every page.

      Les Misérables' infamous tangents, multi-thousand-word digressions into the backstories of the battle of Waterloo or a fictional convent or the Paris sewers, often immediately following cliffhangers, were much less frustrating than I expected simply because of Hugo's writing. (The fact that I am interested in them as a historian of the period also helps somewhat.)

      Were Hugo a modern author, I feel like this novel would be 300 pages shorter, and then he'd publish a series of spin-off novelas and short stories — "Read this short story to learn how Thénardier saved Marius's father at the Battle of Waterloo! Buy this novela to learn the backstory of the saintly bishop who turned Jean Valjean's life around!" And I'm not sure if the book would have been better for it or not!

      It's no surprise that streamlined adaptations of the novel have proven so popular, nor that the book itself remains in print — even if a shockingly high number of people seem to believe it's set during the French Revolution.
    • 2/5
      Various French people are miserable.1.5/4 (Meh).Impossibly long and boring. I gave up after 150 pages (in a 1200+ page edition), still having gotten no clue to what the story might be, if any, or even who the main characters are. Reading this book is not how I want to spend my life.
    • 4/5
      Phew - this was a long one. I downloaded a French edition to an e-reader and read it on the T. Hugo loves to digress and I found myself zoning out on the long descriptions of Waterloo and such. The man did love his language though and there are some great passages and lots of interesting words that the weak French/English dictionary installed on the reader couldn't handle. Who knew there were so many French words for hovel? The best parts of course were the adventures of Jean Valjean, the badass ex-prisoner who knew how to escape and be a loving father to the orphan Cosette.
    • 5/5
      A masterpiece!

      Though not flawless Les Misérables earns its five-star rating through and through. The characters are unforgettable, the plot easily digestible and the romanticism palatable. Still relevant, though a little dated, Les Misérables stands tall.

      Hats off.