Rating: 
Summary: A rather grusome story that shows the reader medieval life.
Review: This book, I must say, is nothing like I expected it to be. I thought it would focus on the life of the Hunchback, Quasimodo, but instead it looked at the lives of many unfortunate people along the way. Most of the characters are rather sad people; A gypsy girl taken advantage of by a crude soldier; a lustful deacon gone mad; a lonely bell ringer persecuted by the mobs of Paris; a poet/philosopher broke and homeless. I had expected, well, brighter, different characters and storylines. One this I found amazing about this story, however, was the shading of the characters. I expected the villain, Claude Frollo, to be black-hearted. Instead, at parts he was almost a shade of gray. Note of caution: I would not recommend this book to children. Yes, Disney made a movie out of it, but the true tale is not one for youngsters. The entire story, especially the end, is too sand and dark for young readers to enjoy
Rating: 
Summary: Shouldn't a writer know how to write?
Review: I stopped reading on page three. This poorly rewritten story contained numerous incomplete sentences, going against everything I am trying to teach my kids (9 and 5). Children deserve to have proper modeling of sentence structure, and this book doesn't cut it.Yes, this book by Tim Wynne-Jones might have a great story, but it's overshadowed by the author's sloppy attempts in the retelling. Don't your children deserve more? I would instead recommend Jimmy Symonds' version of this story by Eyewitness Classics. Mr. Symonds excellently condensed this marvelous story, and we enjoyed the sidebars giving additional information into the time the story was written. The quality of the book was carried through to ALL aspects of the book--including grammar. Don't underestimate your kids.
Rating: 
Summary: Read Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame
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: An Amazing Book
Review: I don't really know what I can say about this book, but I'm sure I'll find the words... Nevermind, I have them. If you pick it up and expect the Disney movie, you're in for one of the biggest surprises of your life. At the beginning it seems to start out slowly because some of the characters introduced weren't in the Disney movie at all, so you're like... "oookay, who are these people?" However, this book was so great. It was very sad and depressing, but it had it's happy moments, which is always nice.
It was amazing, and one of the best books I have ever read. Disney is a butcher of good stories!!! Arg! (This, however, is just my opinion. If you're a fan of Disney and I have offended you, I do apologize.)
I loved his writing style, with how descriptive he is with the setting and the characters. Victor Hugo does it so well that you feel like you are actually in Paris in the 15th century, and that you actually know the characters. They were portrayed so much differently in the book. My favorite character was Dom Claude Frollo, and I thought that I would have hated him, especially since he causes virtually all of the horrible suffering in the story. Weird, huh? I also liked Quasimodo for his kindness despite how unfortunate he is. He's constantly ill-treated, but he still keeps his good-natured soul.
I'm sure I'll be picking up copies of some of Victor Hugo's other books soon as well. The ending of this book brought me to tears, but I don't know about anybody else, since nobody I've talked to has read it.
I'm the sort of person who cries easily, and I became very attached to the characters. This book is filled with death, but some of it made me smile. I loved the ending even though it was tragic, but I won't spoil it. Go read it yourself. Not all stories can end happily.
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: A Masterpiece!!!
Review: It broke my heart to see anyone compare this masterpiece to a Disney film or a modern work of art. There is NO comparison. I first read this book 17 years ago and was so captivated that I could not put it down. I often wonder why Hollywood tried to reproduce this book at all, since not one single movie has ever come close to giving us a glimpse of all this book has to offer. The ties and the love and the betrayal, the architectual detail alone, all of it make for one of the most profound works of literature ever written. Please do not be spoiled by the quick reads that one is most aquainted with today. Take the time to reaquaint yourself with this extraordinary work that will leave you heartbroken and amazed by the end.
Rating:
Summary: Shouldn't a writer know how to write?
Review: I stopped reading on page three. This poorly rewritten story contained numerous incomplete sentences, going against everything I am trying to teach my kids (9 and 5). Children deserve to have proper modeling of sentence structure, and this book doesn't cut it. Yes, this book by Tim Wynne-Jones might have a great story, but it's overshadowed by the author's sloppy attempts in the retelling. Don't your children deserve more? I would instead recommend Jimmy Symonds' version of this story by Eyewitness Classics. Mr. Symonds excellently condensed this marvelous story, and we enjoyed the sidebars giving additional information into the time the story was written. The quality of the book was carried through to ALL aspects of the book--including grammar. Don't underestimate your kids.
Rating:
Summary: The Genius of Victor Hugo
Review: Quasimodo, Esmerelda, Claude Frollo, the "Sack Woman", Gringoire, Captain Phoebus, Djali. What signifies these characters to linger in the reader's concscience long after they have read Victor Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris (or Hunchback of Notre Dame)are their humanitarian qualities that reflects so much raw passion, life, and such exquisite Gothic images within their characteristic interior. Quasimodo, Esmerelda, and Claude Frollo are the most familiar names in this book, as well as in literary culture. And Djali is in fact one of the most famous animal characters in literature. The Notre Dame catherdral, the streets, the people, and the sounds of Medieval Paris also signifies Victor Hugo's genius and utmost respect for describing the Paris of the past to compliment the Paris of today (or at least at his time). How Victor Hugo has carefully and so perfectly arranged so many plots filled with humor, depth, emotion, darkness, redemption, obsession, lost, hate, regret, and love in each character, as well as so magnificently described Paris so fluently with as much detail as possible, is just undeniably spectacular. Like Les Miserables (which to me personally is one of the most definitive epics of human life that i have ever read), Victor Hugo brings out these common, lost, neglected, misunderstood, and strange characters from the dark and expresses their human qualities of love, hate, fate, revenge, and devotion in the light. When i think of the Disney movie version of this classic novel, the more i feel that Disney obviously didn't read or follow the concept of this novel. For kids, sure it makes sense that a theme out of this is that evil falls, and that people will love you no matter how deformed your face looks. But i believe if they really read this book, they would realize that a story like this isn't for children. The story is not nice at the end (it's the most haunting and tragic part of the whole novel). The story isn't about the love of Quasimodo and Esmerelda. The story isn't even about Quasimodo. It's about a mixture of important and random characters that creates a chain of plots and emotions that intertwines with one another to create a whole story where everybody in the novel has had some influence or some importance to the whole story. And that's the problem with a majority of movies based on classic novels like Hunchback, Jane Eyre, etc. Movies take away the poetry and aesthetic quality of the story, while taking away so many minor characters, and plots. And through my observation, it seems to always soften up the original tale instead of bearing the true dark images that the original novels portray (such as A Farewell To Arms,where there was actually more dialogue in the movie than the book itself, and so much more emotion at the end which didn't even happen in the book. If you want to check that out, read the book first, i recommend that as well). To me it's a waste of such a wonderful classic that deserves to be read rather than seen through celluloid. If you saw the laughable and extremely make believe and rewritten version of Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame, or saw any other movie version, then you definitely must read the book. I believe it will be more worthwhile and more understanding, it will definitely make you laugh, cry, smile, and think, very much.
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