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Summary: The Notra Dame Review
Review: I believe that the Hunchback Of Notra Dame was a very well writen and a very well though out book. I believe that it is a good book for a few reasons. For one every time that i began to read it, it made me think about what it was like back when Quasie Moto was "living." another reason that I believe the Hunchback of Notra Dame was a good book was because it made me open up my vocabulary a bitt by the auther's word choise. A third reaso that liked the Hunchback was because of how exiting it was when Quasi was duking it out with his "dad" and how they were both trying to kill each other even though they were "father" and son. I also found it enteresting that Quasi fell in love with esmerelda.
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Summary: A Young Teens Point of View
Review: I enjoyed this book. Victor Hugo is an excellent author and is very good at describing things so that you can actually picture them in your mind. The characters in this book are very enticing and mysterious. I felt at times like I was right there with Quasimodo (the main character) and other characters like Esmerelda and Claude Frollo. The movie based on this book leaves some very important scenes out and Victor Hugo writes those scenes so well that no one should miss out on reading them. From the very beginning I was drawn in by curiosity. Hugo has a way of writing that makes you want to find out what comes next. It is almost as if I couldn't wait till I could get home and just read for hours. I recommend that anyone who would like to read a very well written book that can help to improve his or her vocabulary and that also would be very enjoyable should read this novel by Victor Hugo.
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Summary: Esme, I'm thirsty......................
Review: I know I'm lonley as I dreamed another dream of the beautiful Esmeralda. Hugo is a near perfect storyteller, who has given us the most lovely, virtuous , sensual woman in all literature. Recognizing nature demands balance he offers Quasimodo, the deformed bell-ringer. A classic story of good versus evil. If you're looking for a good tale this story is for you. If you want to meet a woman who will steal your heart and warm your thoughts then read this book today, for Esmeralda awaits you.
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Summary: This book captures the very essence of the human soul
Review: This book is absolutely brilliant. Despite some chapters in the beggining, which are a bit too verbose and descriptive, all of it is immensely interesting, involving and deep. The characters act just like real persons do- there are no archetypes here; and characters like Quasimodo and Claude Frollo find themselves often despairing or lost when faced with their innermost desires. Actually all of the characters in the book have a fierce struggle within, but each deals with it in a different manner: Gringoire, the poet, seeks in art and in the beautiful Esmeralda the solace for his anguish. Frollo is a very divided man: while he is a scholar, and thus very proud of science and the knowledge it brings, he is also a man haunted by this knowledge that gives him everything he needs concerning the Mind but very few in what concerns the Spirit, and this ends up making this religious man tread paths which he would never have thought he would. Though in a very literary way, what Victor Hugo achieves in this book is to portrait the human soul, not only in all its glory but also in all its decadence.
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Summary: An amazing and affecting novel
Review: Simply put, The Hunchback of Notre Dame is one of the best novels I have ever read. I loved Victor Hugo's writing style (or the translation thereof), the comprehensiveness of description of both characters and setting (for the most part), and the ideas that Hugo provoked in me as I went through the book. The novel is about a beautiful, young, virtuous and romantic gypsy (La Esmeralda), a deformed and deaf bellringer of the cathedral of Notre Dame (Quasimodo), and an archdeacon (Frollo) whose obsessive nature creates the tragedy that all three will realize at the end of the novel. All three characters have the one uniting feature of unrequited love. Esmeralda seeks the love of Phoebus, an officer whose only interest is that of the carnal nature, and sees the gypsy as only another girl to have his way with. Quasimodo and Frollo each seek the love of Esmeralda, who does not return it due to their physical and (best attempt at description) spiritual odiousness, respectively. Ironically, the hideous Quasimodo and lovely Esmeralda hold the most in common, as Hugo makes the reader aware that both of them are adopted (and even in their infancy, their lives are linked), and that both are social pariahs, Quasimodo due to his appearance, and Esmeralda due to her gypsy heritage, her beauty, a crime attributed to her, and, of all things, a performing goat she trained, the sum of which tags her as a sorceress. In fact, both, due to these characteristics, are linked with the devil, although their actions show a goodness that outweighs that of any other characters in the novel. Variations on the notion of "love" are examined in the book, There is Esmeralda's romantic love where she imagines the handsome captain Phoebus to be the embodiment of masculine virtue, Phoebus' physical love where the value of a woman is based on her appearance and promiscuity and lasts until he's satisfied his physical urges, Frollo's obsessive love where a person, whose life is spent on monomaniacly focusing on his faith, his studies, and alchemy, finds a beautiful young girl in his sights (his love amounting to a sickness, his resulting actions morbid symptoms), and Quasimodo's love, based on the kind acts of another. This last love is the only one of the three not focused on one's appearance, as Quasimodo does not develop this affection until Esmeralda soothes him while he is tortured for trying to kidnap her at Frollo's (his adoptive father) direction. It is Quasimodo's love and his expression of it in acts of kindness, not to mention saving Esmeralda's life once and trying to do so a second time, that makes him such an endearing character. This novel also has some incredible descriptive moments, such as the dark streets of 15th century Paris while Frollo wanders in a state of confusion following what he thinks is the death of the woman he loves, and the depiction of Paris at dawn, quaint and placid just before the story's most tragic climax. Hugo also provides some description of the architecture of the cathedral itself, which I found very interesting, and a description of the layout of Paris in the 15th century, which I found not so interesting, due to my unfamiliarity with the city itself and the history thereof, although a French reader, especially one in the 19th century, would have probably appreciated it. This is the only element of the novel that I did not like, and it is but one chapter. This story grabbed me, and I was hanging on every word Hugo wrote. I found myself emotionally affected at many points of the story, which is not something that often occurs when I read a novel. I was so impressed with the book that I got Les Miserables after only reading 100 pages of Hunchback. I give this novel 5 stars, and it deserves every single one of them.
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Summary: Not what you think...
Review: If you think you know this story but never actually read this book, think again. It is, first of all, the greatest evocation of 10th Century Europe ever committed to paper... and a love letter to one of the world's greatest gothic cathedrals. It also has some of the most complex characters in all literature - Frollo, a good man destroyed by one great flaw; Clopin, an evil man who for one moment in time becomes the hero he might have been had his life only been different; Gringoire, whose eccentricity we like so much until we realise that he actually values a goat more than a human being... this is real life - in shades of grey rather than black and white. All of their fates are slowly intertwined as they each in turn become part of the story of two much simpler but memorable characters that bind the story together - a beautiful young woman and a deformed young man. The story has become such the stuff of legend that it's easy to forget that's what it's really all about at heart.
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Summary: Best reason in the world for Editors
Review: This is a rambling and boring work about fifteenth century Paris, and the story of the Hunchback, the cabalistic Abbot, Esmeralda and Captain Phoebus forms only a small component of this excess of verbage. There was never a better reason for abridged versions than the full text of this book. Read a shortened version, see the movie anything, but don't put yourself through the torture of reading this. I did, and as a result I have developed a hunch on my own back from cringing at the sheer volume of absolutely pointless prose.
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Summary: Poised, darkening & haunting
Review: Although my title may sound cliche, I truly feel that Victor Hugo's famed book, 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame' is exactly those words. I would like to use them in a philosophical sense, but I feel that the anylis of a book with such depth, would be meaningless to a person who does not understand it's concept. Upon finishing the book, I was prompted to write several poems which related to the text. The poems are currently hiding from the sunllight, like Quasimodo, and I am still yet to decide to send them away or not. I'm very sorry if you are annoyed with the dryness of this small critique, but all I can say is to read this piece and bask in it's sadness and hope.
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Summary: When A Public Hanging Was Entertainment For The Masses
Review: Victor Hugo never wrote a book titled THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME. Some early translator gave it that name. What Hugo wrote was a book called NOTRE DAME OF PARIS (in French: NOTRE DAME de PARIS). This is not a book that is primarily about a hunchback named Quasimodo or a beautiful Gypsy girl named Esmerelda. It is a book narrowly focused on the Cathedral of Notre Dame situated on the Ile de la Cite in the center of Paris and, more broadly, on the 15th century city of Paris. This was a Paris where public executions or any form of punishment involving public humiliation were the highest forms of entertainment and drew the kinds of crowds that we would see at a major sports event today. If this book is not read with this in mind, the reader might well be disappointed because he came to it with a different sort of book in mind. I would like to congratulate the one previous reviewer who reviewed the book on the basis of its actual scope and intent. Now to the human aspects of the novel, the plot so to speak: There are no perfect angels in this book. After all, Esmerelda was a part of a band of thieves who came to public gatherings for the express purpose of seeing what they could "gather" for themselves. Quasimodo was not a misshapen humanitarian. He had been known to carry out a dirty deed or two himself. As for the rest of the characters, there's not a role model in the bunch. To Hugo's credit, we really care about Quasimodo and Esmerelda, "warts and all." This is one indication of good writing. The basic plot, devoid of any embellishments, is rather simple. Esmerelda, out of humanitarian instincts, comes to Quasimodo's aid in a small but meaningful way when he really needs a friend. Quasimodo, as best as he is able, falls in love with Esmerelda. When the arch villain, Archdeacon Dom Frollo, who is also in love with Esmerelda but has been rejected by her, tries to have her hanged, Quasimodo saves her, but only for a while. Eventually she is executed under circumstances where Quasimodo can't came to her rescue. Quasimodo throws our villain, Dom Frollo, to his death from the heights of the cathedral. In a way, its a shame that when an author creates a memorable character, or an opera composer writes an unforgettable aria, these creations take on such lives of their own that they overshadow the novel or opera from which they come. That has certainly been one of the fates of this book. Too many readers have come to it searching for the cute little Disney Quasimodo, or even Charles Laughton's unforgettable Quasimodo from the 1939 movie. When it turned out that the scope of this book was so much more comprehensive, they were disappointed for all the wrong reasons. A note about reading Hugo, or any other author worth reading. One should read for enjoyment, and, where it is available, for information that will increase one's understanding of this world. I have noticed that several reviewers, some of whom didn't like this book, talked of its length, or of Hugo's use of "similes and metaphors." Anyone who is busy trying to analyze a book for styles or techniques doesn't have the right inclination to enjoy the book, to enjoy the atmospheres the author has created, or to get the emotional impact that was the author's intent. I would recommend THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME as a book that is well worth reading if read for the right reasons. Don't read it, or any book, looking for "techniques" or for "neo-modernism," or "anything-else-isms." I guarantee you that's not what the author had in mind when he wrote his novel. He meant it to be read, not analyzed.
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Summary: Haunting Masterpiece
Review: This is the best book I have ever read; its characters in their frailty and flawed humanity move inexorably toward their collective dooms. Not a cheery work, but profound, touching, and overall a stunning achievement in literature.
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