Rating: 
Summary: Read this great classic!
Review: This epic tragedy pits a beautiful, earthbound angel against a venal, earthbound devil, and is set amid the squalor of Medieval Paris. Our protagonists alternately dance and skulk through the chapters, leading to a desperate and heart-wrenching conclusion. Could our angel be a witch; could our devil redeem himself? We desperately hope for any outcome other than the one we fear, and we cannot believe that Hugo would taunt us with such elemental beauty, and then destroy it before our eyes. My only complaint is not with Hugo, but with the translation of the title. Why couldn't we anglophones be trusted with "Notre Dame of Paris?" The book is less about Quasimodo than about the conflict between Medieval Paris's lofty aspirations for man and the depredations of daily life.
Rating:
Summary: Book of stone
Review: Victor Hugo sculpts from the stone of Notre Dame characters and story that become molten and pour onto the pages of this grand edifice of a novel. Hugo wrote: "...human thought, in changing its form, was about to change its mode of expression; that the dominant idea of each generation would no longer be written with the same matter, and in the same manner; that the book of stone, so solid and so durable, was about to make way for the book of paper" In Gothic architecture story was carved in stone, many gospel stories are sculpted in the stone of Notre Dame for example, and with the advent of the printing press Hugo sees the decline of this storying in stone. He places his novel on the cusp between stone and print and even seems to create Quasimodo from one of the stone gargoyles that ornament Notre Dame. In one scene where Quasimodo has created a fire on Notre Dame to melt lead to rain down on attackers below the stone figures seem to come to life: "The restless light of the flame made them move to the eye. There were griffins which had the air of laughing, gargoyles which one fancied one heard yelping, salamanders which puffed at the fire, tarasques which sneezed in the smoke. And among the monsters thus roused from their sleep of stone by this flame, by this noise, there was one who walked about, and who was seen, from time to time, to pass across the glowing face of the pile, like a bat in front of a candle." The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a magnificent novel polished by the author into a brilliant gem.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best 19th Century novels
Review: Yes, the many misconceptions about the book have been highlighted by other reviews so I'll only mention them briefly. The original title was Notre Dame de Paris. As such, the book does not focus on Quasimodo but on the cathedral and medieval Paris and the stories that have intertwined there. The book is not about not judging people by their looks.Having said that, let me add that this is one of the richest and best novels I've read. The book is everything that the movie versions seem not to be (I say seem as I only know of them from reviews). It focuses on obsession, passion and revenge. The main plotlines are Frollo in his obsessive quest for both the arcane knowledge and Esmerelda, Frollo's brother in his tomfoolery, Captain Phoebus and Pierre Gringoire - an unlikely addition to the events. The book has a lot of philosophical viewpoints. There's the mysticism and theology of the passages of Frollo, with his reading of the cathedral as a grail of arcane wealth to be uncovered. As such, his views reflect many bizarre philosophies of the middle ages. One of the greates aspects of the book is its descriptions of medieval Parision life in all of its unsplendour. There's the public performances, executions, thieves, raids, brawls and the like. And out of all of that, Hugo still manages to pull images of beauty like Esmerelda with her pet goat. Hugo's digressions are something that nerages many readers but I liked them. Firstly, what he's saying is of interest - his view on the aesthetics and ethics of the Gothic movement and the development of civilisation are certainly impassioned. As to those who think they don't belong in a novel, that seems to be a very constricting and removed-from-art view of what a novel is. Yes, it slows down the story but so do words. The only one I skimmed was the detailed description of the streets of Paris but again that's because I've only been once briefly and if I'd known more it would have spoken more to me. Read this book! You'll learn so much about medieval life, the Gothic movement, the nature of obsession and evil and the quest for knowledge that the cathedral of Notre Dame will gain a whole new significance.
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