I'm not sure how to rate a book like this. It is obviously a classic, and for very good reason. It is funny, dark, sad, and suspenseful. But I find it very hard to enjoy something so filled with racism, sexism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and ableism. Overall, I'm glad to have read it. I'm also fairly amazed at how much the Disney movie kept from the original story-it actually follows the book pretty closely. And, as tragedies are such an important part of human story-telling, this one is true to form.

At times I wasn't sure if the author was denouncing all the above-mentioned isms, or agreeing with them. Maybe both, for different things? I'm not sure. I'll give this a star rating to reflect my enjoyment of the reading, and not so much to reflect that it is a classic. When reading stories like this I try to maintain cultural relativism-it is not my time, my culture, my society, therefore I can't judge it the same way I would my contemporary stories, even as I disagree with so much of the wrongs of that time and place.

Ultimately, I'm glad to have read it.

 

The relationships between the characters in this story evokes a strong empathy in the reader aswell as contempt. Hugo is the king of context and paints Paris in so much architectural, political and cultural detail that you can vividly picture the setting and time-period of this story. As a musician I found Quasimodo's connection with the cathedral bells heart-rending. Some contextual passages felt a little too slow-paced, but the storyline was so important and kept me engaged until the end.