One Page More...Les Mis review (kind of)

On this blog, I write my last confession. Read it now, while I at last am typing. It's the story of Victor Hugo's original that got turned into a musical that everybody l...oves.

Ok, enough of that. Basically I'm a bit of a shrewd business woman (not that this makes me any money) but thought I'd save my plug of Victor Hugo's original novel Les Miserables (translated by Norman Denny) for the morning after the night before. In the sense of the huge 02 concert and subsequent end to the 25th anniversary tour.

Just as a disclaimer, I'm always slightly loathed to use the original author's name when it's a translation, however it just makes life easier so I'll be referring to Hugo when I really mean 'Denny's translation of Hugo'. Simples.

Unfortunately I'm a complete Sauer Kraut as I didn't have enough money to make the tour and by the time I had enough for the cheapest seats, they had only the £125 + ones left. Bitter to the bone.

However, I am going to try and make some notable comparisons between the 'original' Queen's production (combined with my own experience of a NODA winning school production) which we all know and love and the novel itself.

I've always been a huge fan of the show - there's just something about it and I've been meaning to read the novel for a few years. At 1200 pages it seemed somewhat daunting (especially as I'm a literature student so always have about 5 other novels on the go that I should be reading instead). Furthermore I'd been told that a stupid amount of the beginning of the novel is on the Bishop who, in the show, has a couple of lines and a dress and not much more.

However, I was amazed at just how captivating Hugo's exploration of 19th century France was. The text is long and is indeed sometimes arduous but that's part of the appeal. Many readers of the novel note the 'digressions' from the plot which, at the time, I initially willed to go faster. These 'digressions' however are so subtly integral to the plot and so essential to gain the full array of emotions that span across the book. I'm trying to avoid mentioning too much on the novel but I really just needed somewhere to sit here and shout PLEASE READ THIS BOOK.

It's clever in a way that many works of Literature in this age of the novella fail to achieve. Thought provoking and insanely moving, it even achieves what the show fails to do and makes me like little Cosette (I can't stand her in the show, I still hate older Cosette in the book). The characterisation is simply perfect; Valjean is more complex and less 'saintly' than the Schönberg & Boubill masterpiece as is the rest of the characters. Eponine isn't a whining, strangely attractive (for someone who the revolutionaries think is a 'boy climbing the barricade') teenage girl who you're quite glad to see shot (I am a tad heartless for an example of a theatre lover). She's a streetwise, hardnered criminal who takes a liking to Marius.]

If there's something that is ever so slightly irritating about the novel (shoot me now), it has to be Hugo's perhaps too blatant patriotism. As an English person, there's only so many times I enjoy being told that I'm not quite as amazing as the French and I have to admit I rolled my eyes once or twice (the shame, the shame). But once again (in a strange way?) this is part of the charm. I got the impression of Hugo sitting there digressing away and pouring his soul in to the novel. With his little beard and everything. I always think he looks a tad like Father Christmas.

Maybe he is and he gets out all his anger on the world through his art and is then happy for one evening in December...or not. Yes.

Back to what I was saying, um...

There's a darkness (that comes without a warning...to sing Les Mis...I'll shut up now) that is simply not captured in the show. The complexity of the relationship and chase between Javert and Valjean, for example, and the grotty underworld of the slums. I physically felt my heart racing during some of the descriptions. The syntax and flow of the language is absolutely beautiful - however similar it is to the original French, Denny's translation has to be commended for its ability to move.

This is such a self-satisfied, subjectively moved comment on the novel but words cannot describe how beautiful it is. Read it, read it, read it. Please!

Thinking about the production, my love for the Schönberg & Boubill musical too has increased. There's no way even the most prolific stage writer could capture the complete picture of Hugo's 19th century France. But these two do a ruddy good job - there's absolutely no way you appreciate any adaption until you've read the original. The tiniest throw away lines and symbols from the show are so embedded as an integral part of the novel. "But the tigers come at night" for example is so beautifully taken from Hugo's metaphor and Javert's stars is an utter masterpiece when taken from the context of the book. I couldn't possibly list even some of the subtle metaphors that a viewer who hasn't read the original is missing because it would ruin reading the book and the discovery of those subtitles for yourself.

Basically, just read the book. Please. I don't often say this but it really is a work of genius.