The Hunchback of Notre Dame (A Graphic Novel Audio): Illustrated Classics

Some parts were tough to get through, especially the chapter called "Bird's Eye View of Paris". Good, compelling story. How it was made into a Disney movie is beyond me though. It's about "forbidden love" of a priest for a 15 year old girl who he kills for. The emotions of the characters could have been pursued farther, but a good story.

A hunchback, a gypsy, a mad priest. A church and a scaffold. Paris is not exactly the city of lights. Peopled by colourful characters, depraved creatures, hopeless beings, the architecture of the city, however, is a sight to behold. And the church of Notre Dame is the most magnificent of all.I enjoyed very much Hugo's writing, including the digressions on the evolution of architecture as a form of “writing” and immortality, as well as the portrayal of the center of the city, street by street. I didn't enjoy the story very much, though – it was carrying martyrdom too far. The priest was vile, the soldier petty, and Esmeralda not just cloying but downright foolish, too. Quasimodo, however, made up for all that – pity he didn't live a happier life. Though it doesn't hold a candle to Les Mis, I'm still glad to have read this, as I greatly admire Hugo's ability to paint images with words.

"The Hunchback of Notre Dame" is my first Victor Hugo, and the comments I had previously heard about the vividness of his descriptive prose were certainly proved by this work. By the halfway point in the book, it seemed as if not very much had happened yet, but once I got used to the style, I didn't really mind. The story has a satisfying ambiguity to it; there is not just a black and white delineation between hero and villain, nor are the moral points of the story overtly spelled out. The reader walks away with lots to think about from the plot alone; intermingled with this are Hugo's interesting ideas about how literature has supplanted the role of architecture in society (in a chapter which, strangely, was almost lost to history). Many have posited the role of Notre Dame itself as a character in the book, but Hugo too almost becomes a character, in that the way this story gets told probably could not have been told the same by anyone else. This is one of those strange books that doesn't take hold as an immediate favourite and yet won't get its hooks out of you.The Barnes and Noble edition features a nice introduction by Isabel Roche, who in the series' featured "Inspired by This Work" section is far kinder to the Disney version of this story than I would have expected. Her footnotes are immensely helpful throughout the book, her endnotes less so. If you are a reader who perpetually gets exhausted by having your pinky finger in the back of a very large volume, skipping the few pages of endnotes probably won't bother you too much.

Could this book be anymore slow and boring? I think it took about 4 chapter just for him to walk down the street. Maybe I am just a victim of the modern literary style, but I like the author to get to the point. If I wanted to know every last detail of Paris, I would read a history book.

Before reading, I was struck by the original French title, which makes no mention of the Hunchback of Notre-Dame, but only of the cathedral itself. This makes complete sense, when reading the novel, as one almost feels as though, at points, Hugo is simply writing a biography of the cathedral. He devotes a considerable number of pages describing the building's inner anatomy from the bells to the crypt. This devotion spurred a revival in mid-nineteenth century French architecture, with many Parisians restoring buildings to their former glory. Ultimately, though, Hugo describes the novel as being the victor over architecture. It is the novel which can put civilisations' greatest ideas in to the hands of all people, in a way that only architecture was able to in a bygone age. This Oxford translation was quite stunning: at numerous points I had to re-read a sentence just to grasp a beautiful turn-of-phrase, and wondered at what Hugo wrote in the original French text. There are points where Hugo departs from the central storyline in order to ponder at length over one of the central character's views on philosophy, religion, architecture, or literature. At these junctures in the narrative, it can sometimes be quite tricky to pick the novel back up and return to where you left off. I got the most out of the novel when reading it in huge chunks, as I was able to return to the narrative with greater ease. In hindsight, I wonder, if there were moments where I would have appreciated a deeper insight in to the characters' lives before the novel. Surely Hugo could have pondered much longer on Quasimodo's loneliness, his place in the world, his relationship with the God who had made him and the struggles that he had to face in a world which poured scorn on him in so many ways. Hugo prefers, I assume, to share these nuggets through narrative and subtle association. The depiction of Frollo's lust and demise is so maddeningly described in places, for example, that it makes for gripping reading – at times, it felt like reading a modern thriller. I can only guess at the kind of reaction this novel would have received in the nineteenth century. The way in which Hugo intertwines the theological consequences of his demise with his pursuit of Esmerelda's matrimony, is so superbly done. In the end, his pursuit of her leads him to openly reject God and paradise, in exchange for his vacuous (and fatal) lust for Esmerelda. At one point, Hugo writes about his point of no return: 'I drew myself up; I fled; but alas! something within me had fallen never to rise again, something had come upon me from which I could not flee.' If you like long classic novels, then you may enjoy Notre Dame, although you may be put off by the long passages on architecture – if I was to read this again, I would probably aim to read it while sailing down the Seine! This was my second attempt at getting through the book: this time I got to the end, and it was certainly worth it.

When I finished this book I said: "Finished tonight (it's 11:45) Hunchback of Notre Dame. There is no doubt: Victor Hugo could write (yet...in way it seems forced: like I would write if I could."

Victor Hugo has always wowed me with his ability to arrange language, with his broad cast of characters (who never resemble each other, but who still are believable and have endless amounts of humanity), and with his seemingly effortless flow from plot to subplot to unsuspected and terrific endings. Hunchback is one of those novels that reminds an author why they love to write: the outcome can be phenomenal.

My first foray into 1800s literature has not been a bad one. Hugo draws the reader in with a unique narrative style that not only gives a large sense of authenticity to the story with its direct, 4th wall breaking notions to the reader- as if being lectured to on a history lesson in school, but also gives a sense of life to the world in which the story takes place in by changing perspectives constantly and making use of side characters to transition from one scene to another very effectively. Other novels have done this before, I'm sure, but I'd imagine few have done so to this extent. Add to this some wonderful imagery and you have the novel's greatest strength at hand: world building/scene setting. I challenge anyone to bring forth a more living, detailed, and breathing version of Paris than Hugo has done in this novel.

That said and done, there are a few flaws I have with the actual meat of the story. Some are subjective, such as Hugo's tackling of philosophical and societal issues through characters that are obviously not very good at defending the side they are supposed to be representing. For example, I believe the trial scene with La Esmeralda was supposed to be part of the not-so-subtle on-going critique towards capital punishment as a concept, where he portrays the system as one-sided, quick, and easily manipulated by personal bias on the judges' part. The problem is, in order to do this he makes use of unbelievably moronic characters, such as Captain Phoebus, whom we are to believe cares more about his own lust and pride than the life of an innocent, or the fact that literally no one decides to double check the judge's assertion on the victim's physical condition, or the fact that no one wonders why the priest, of all people and whom La Esmeralda claimed to be the real assailant, visited her alone during her imprisonment. It's just unrealistic, and there are several other philosophical critiques of his that are affected by this, such as his commentary on blind love/loyalty. I mean, it's all fine and dandy to present the flaws of an ideology you're critiquing through one-sided exaggeration in order to get your message across I suppose, but it just comes off as a bit too... Ayn Rand-ish to me.

Aside from that, the biggest universal complaint of the story is the one-dimensional aspect to about 75% of the characters, to which I would agree. It's not so much that they're uninteresting from a personality perspective, so much as their character development and motivations come off as very contrived across the board in an attempt to shoehorn them into the more melodramatic roles of the story. I also take issue with the fact that the two most interesting characters- the old praying woman and poet, played relatively small roles in the story. All in all though, Hugo has presented some very unique storytelling ideas here and has built a truly authentic Paris. Though the story isn't very good, especially from a character-driven perspective, it is still worth reading if nothing but for the interesting narrative experimentation and metaphorical commentary on cultural revolution by use of architecture.

TL;DR: Style over substance.

Victor Hugo is so long-winded and overly detailed. I had to skim through every other chapter where he describes the layout of the city. I got so bored working my way through all that!

If I could give this book ten stars I would.

A great work by one of the world's greatest authors. Complete excitement. It is not like any movie. I was shocked to discover this but it makes a much better read. Far more realistic.

The infamous story of the disfigured bell ringer and his guardian, the priest, who both fall in love with a beautiful, young gypsy. When Quasimodo tries to save Esmerelda from the gallows, the story ends in tragedy. Disney immortalized these characters and their lives, but Disney got it wrong. There isn't just one bad guy and bunch of good people. Here, no one's innocent and no one gets a happy ending.The name of the book is a bit misleading, I think. Having seen the Disney movie, I figured the protagonist would be Quasimodo. As odd as it is, though, the book doesn't really have a protagonist. Hugo kind of flits you from character to character in what seems an almost random pattern, often leaving one character at a vital point of the story to go visit the King and his clerk as they discuss how much everything costs. It can be very odd at times and honestly, it wasn't really a style of writing I wholly enjoyed. But then again, I was well aware of Hugo's tendency to go off on tangents before I started the book so it didn't come as a shocker and for the most part, it didn't detract too much from the story.One thing I wasn't expecting going into the book, however, was an approximate 100 page discription of Paris about a third of the way into the book. Hugo's prose is delightful, but even so I had a hard time getting through this section. However, I could see the relevence before I'd even finished the book. Paris is described as a huge city, branching out from a central location with random buildings connected to other random buildings of little to no similarity. Hugo jumps from one building to another to another, and in the end, he sums the entire description up nice and tidy in about a page. This is the same relationship as the characters. All the characters, who seem to have no relation to the others for the most part, are all connected and each character affects the fate of the others. They all interlock, even though they don't see it themselves. It's very impressive when you sit back and view the grand scope of the story.All in all, I heartily enjoyed this book and will be purchasing it for myself at some point in the near future. I recommend reading it, but don't expect to walk away feeling happy. The end is tragic (and a few scenes - namely one particular death scene - are very disturbing), no one gets their perfect, Disney ending, and the gargoyles, sadly, do not sing and dance ;-)

When one is doing evil 'tis madness to stop half-way.

A good classic but somehow drifted off away from the real plot. I know that the descriptive language was suppose to make you imagine that you're in that place but somehow I find that less enjoyable.

This book is amazing. It\'s more about the conflict of old vs. new, of architecture vs. literature, than it is about man vs. man. It\'s beautifully written and deeply tragic. I loved it.

The classic tale set against the marvelously detailed description of the city. The story about Quasimodo, but it starts with him being praised. The hatred/prejudice comes only after misunderstandings. The overbearing message- ignorance breeds hatred. Worth the read.

 This was difficult going. As ever with Hugo, there's an awful lot of very detaild description of things that are, of themsleves, quite interesting, but it doesn't half slow plot development. Things seem to happen in bursts with not a lot in the chapters in between.

Maybe it took me too long to read it, maybe I didn't allow long enough to get really into it at once, but this was hard going.

Extremely underrated. Hugo's most famous work is without a doubt Les Mis but I can never figure out why. Hunchback is beautiful and tragic and lovely and heartbreaking. Richly detailed but not to the point of tedium. Dramatic characters but still beleivable. It's a kaleidoscope of emotion and fulfills everything you could want in a book. My all time favourite.

It's hard to read this great novel through all the noise created by subsequent adaptions, send-ups and other references. But the essential story is clear enough. The 16 year old Esmerelda has been raised by gypsies and tours with them as a dancer. She is a model of youth, beauty, grace, compassion vitality and innocence. Like her, the grotesque hunchback Quasimodo has lost his parents. He was abandoned as a baby and left to the care of the Church, where he became the bell-ringer in the famous Church. The book tells their interwoven tales. The book can also be seen as a study of males and their faults. Esmerelda stirs interest where-ever she goes, but rarely brings out the best in men. Archdeacon Claude Frollo is a cold intellectual, product of a joyless youth: unattractive in his person, dried-up inside, he is obsessed by his sterile struggle with alchemy, until Esmelda comes along. Once released, his sexual passion flare up within him but emerge out only as cold machinations and wild pronouncements unlikely to appeal to a teen girl. He exemplifies the Church's disconnect between mind and body and between the male and female. Phoebus is a dashing soldier who rescues Esmerelda at one stage, as a more or less routine duty while on patrol keeping the peace, and in doing so wins her heart. But under his gentlemanly polish he is a boor and brute. Gregoire the writer is amiable but weak. Jehan, the only major male character not linked romantically to Esmerelda, has abundant vitality wasted on a dissolute lifestyle.Her mother, tortured by the kidnapping of her daughter as a tot, has had herself walled into a small room with barred windows opening to the public, a concept developed elsewhere in the feminist novel Women in the Wall. Victor Hugo remarks in passing that this sort of self-mortifying behaviour elicited only moderate compassion from the medieval populace, due to their limited sense of personality, of the world stored within each individual. It is strange, for the modern reader, to encounter vast wads of historical description, anecdote and conjecture, sometimes occupying a whole massive chapter. In that way it reminded me of Moby Dick.

This is the kind of book that excites your deepest imaginative spaces and populates your dreams with dancing visions of gargoyles and gypsies... As Hugo admits himself, "if the book has any merit it is in being a work of imagination, of caprice and of fantasy." True, weaved into the larger-than-life story about impossible love, Hugo tries to paint perspectives upon a lively Paris of the early French Renaissance in the year 1482. He allows himself a good many digressions on architecture, on the cityscape and on quasi-historical points which might put off a reader interested exclusively in a good quick plot. Still as any reader will notice and hopefully feel, architecture, Paris and its layout, the people, and especially the eponymous cathedral of Notre Dame, play a crucial role in the way this story is told. These are not only elements in the background, setting the scene, they provide the bricks and raw material for the story. The imposing cathedral itself emerges as narrator and central character, a story-teller in its facade and - incarnated by the mythical Quasimodo in all of its bodily contradictions - a central player in the story. Hugo is trying to build a story the size of oral tradition, with the obscure feel of the middle ages, a story steeped in tradition and myth. His readers back in 1831 would also have recognized the power which he grants the people and popular revolution, and which he implies were unleashed with the printing press. Part indulgence in nostalgia, part concession to fate, the Hunchback of Notre-Dame ("Notre-Dame de Paris" in French) praises the Gothic art and esoteric science of the declining middle ages, while celebrating its demise and the glimmer portending of better things to come.

In some ways, this reads like an odd book. If you read it for the story involving Esmeralda, the beautiful young gypsy girl, Quasimodo the hunchback bell-ringer and Frollo the archdeacon, you may be put off or annoyed by the digressions into the layout of Paris, or the architecture of Notre Dame, or a treatise on architecture in general and why newer isn't always better. For me, I found it created some odd pacing and I wondered if perhaps at one time it was more common to set a scene in such minute detail. But in reading about the book after the fact, I see that in many ways, the story about Esmeralda and company are actually the digressions from the main text, which was Hugo's views about Gothic architecture. Well, it's probably a good thing he put a story around all of that, or it probably would have been a hard sell. (His views, by the way, boil down to "Kids these days! Get off my lawn!")So all right, back to the story that people actually want to read - the gypsy, the bell-ringer, the handsome captain, the archdeacon, and of course, the goat. While reading, I was a little surprised by how few good guys there were - it was very interesting to see that beauty didn't equate to good in Hugo's world. In fact, the moral of the story might be instead of "all that glitters is not gold," "all that glitters is not only not gold, it's got a sharp edge that was probably dipped in poison." As far as the writing goes, for a novel written in the early 1800s, the story skipped along quite quickly, and although some twists were telegraphed far ahead of time, others weren't at all. Well worth the read.Recommended for: people who only know the Disney version of the story, those intimately familiar with Paris, people who prefer animals to humans.Quote: "And then, from morning till night, I have the happiness of passing all my days with a man of genius, who is myself, which is very agreeable."

I was prepared for the novel to be vastly different from the Disney film, more serious and 'grown-up'. In the end the distance was probably less than I was expecting. Although naturally more complex, the novel is comic and carnivalesque in a way that feels somewhat Disney. All the characters are somewhat comically grotesque, and few of their actions feel truly human. I suppose the difference is in the absence of 'good' and 'bad' characters. Esmerelda and Phoebus are as comic and irrationally-driven as everyone else, and Frollo is more screw-eyed than he is evil. The hunchback himself is no protagonist, and to my mind no more interesting than other fringe characters like Clopin, Pierre and the mad mother in the cell.

Very cool how much research went into making this a learning experience about Paris in this time period, as well as a fantastic story. Learned a lot about architecture and all kinds of things. This is why I love historically accurate fiction!

Decent story, but not wonderful. There was one moment that I believe was supposed to come as a shock and a big twist, but Hugo laid everything out in such a way as to make the surprise EXTREMELY predictable. Is it worth reading? Yes. Is it one of the best novels ever? Definitely not.

This would be my advice to Victor Hugo. If I had a time machine I would travel to a time just before he published this book, and give him an intervention.

Dear Mr. Hugo,

Firstly, may I say that I am a big fan of your future work, Le Miserables. And because of that, I cannot accept The Hunchback of Notre Dame as you have written it. If it were written by a different author, I would dismiss this as a three star novel, not terrible, but not a book I would read again if I had the chance. But in the future you will write a masterpiece, and so I rate this a two star novel, for failed potential.

The plot is magnificent. But you have written this story all wrong. You destroyed the mysteries- Esmerelda's enemy, and her mother, by revealing the information too soon, and not using the early revelation to create tension and anticipation in the reader to be sustained throughout the story. Leave things unexplained- it gives you the chance to surprise us later on. Readers love to be surprised.

You made the story less fun to read, by woefully neglecting Esmerelda and Quasimodo (the only sympathetic characters) perspectives. By all means, give us glimpses of the perspective of the villainous archdeacon (no, DON'T! Frankly his perspective disturbed me greatly), use Gringoire's perspective to introduce the book, and show how the mysterious Esmerelda looks to a stranger, give Jehan a few lines to add some wit. But all of that should come to less than a quarter of the book. YOU CREATED TWO AMAZING, SYMPATHETIC, UNIQUE CHARACTERS. GIVE THEM THE VOICE THEY DESERVE!

I admire your story, but the story telling in this novel is incredibly disappointing. I sincerely wish you could have a do-over, rewrite this story with the wisdom and genius you will accumulate by the time you write Le Miserables.

Thankyou for listening,

Goodbye from,
An admirer and well-wisher, a friend.

Modern stories have done for me, they really have. As I was reading Hugo's masterpiece, I saw how all the relationships tied together from a very early point, and it seemed oh-so-inevitable and tiresomely predictable. Why? Because I've read books that take what Hugo did more than a century ago and have popularised the plot and technique, making it, for want of a better word, kitsch.But I read on to the end, enjoying myself almost reluctantly. My opinion changed when I reached the chapter about the King; no other writer I can think of would have been so brave to leave the action and excitement of the thieves' revolt to spend a good fifteen pages introducing the king of France, but there's a reason here, and possibly it's the reason for the writing of this book. It's extraordinary. And then I reached the harrowing conclusion, and now I cannot disagree with the critics that say that this is one of the finest stories ever written. I was moved to the point of tears.

I like the fiction but I don't like the story because it was sad and I couldn't understand the mind.However, I want the person who I can love as Quasimodo.

I reallly liked this book, despite the fact that the ending was so sad, and completley not what I expected or wanted to happen. I loved the Disney version of it, but I knew that the book would not end like the movie. The writing was well written, and the story pulled me in. I liked Quasimodo. He was made to be a repulsive creature that no one could love, but he was kind of endearing. He just wanted to love and be loved by someone. Esmeralda was kind and beautiful, but kind of stupid. All she could think about was Pheobus, who didn't even love her back. Pheobus was a ladies man, and basically didn't care about anything. All in all, the book was very good. I just didn't like the ending. The only good thing was Pierre saved Djali

Hugo is too long-winded and overly detailed. I was majorly bored with his heavy detail on a building or a road...so many details that they often detracted from the story.

Much more poignant, dramatic and even comical then I had been expecting.