Book Review - The Hunchback of Notre Dame

My favorite character is most definitely the goat, Jolie. Of course, I have successively owned and killed 7 goats, all of whom I loved very much. Despite my bias, however, I find her the most amicable character.

I am not a huge fan of the Romantic school, particularly when it descends into the mawkish and fantastic, as this book occasionally does. Hugo, like his Romantic counterparts, uses gypsies, monsters, and lecherous priests for his main characters instead of the two-bit scholars and common folk who are much more compelling.

In the beginning Hugo painstakingly describes Paris and Notre Dame. This would be very useful but he does not paint particularly good word pictures, in my opinion. His description of the 14th century mob is much more interesting but, again, he ignores this in order to write about crazy women immuring themselves because their baby daughter got stolen by gpysies.

Again in line with his genre, Hugo nurtures his plot with large doses of unrealistic sentiments between men and women, hinting at sex but never being so bold as to discuss it realistically. Esmerelda goes about dancing, thereby raising the priest's lust, but she is never described in erotic terms. Quasimodo, a young man despite his deformity, possesses an unreal platonic affection for the gypsy girl. The only normal loves in the story, those of the soldier and the philosopher, are disparaged because they are not "strong" enough.

In nuce, Hugo's mixture of the fantastic and the tragic ends up being merely maudlin.