book review the hunchback of notre dame

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Book Review: “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” by Victor Hugo

Published in 1831 in French under the title Notre-Dame de Paris , this book has been made into an opera, a ballet, several stage plays, two musicals, and at least 15 films, including TV and animated versions. One conclusion I could draw from this is that it’s a very popular tale, and so there is a good chance that you already have some idea of what it’s about. Another conclusion that I came to while listening to David Case’s expert audiobook narration, is that it was written in a way that lends itself to dramatic interpretation. It’s not hard to see why so many theater and film producers have found it hard to resist the urge to adapt this book to their medium. It comes ready-made with dramatic set pieces, entertaining dialogue, moving soliloquies, skillfully blocked stage business, characters making dramatic entrances and exits, vividly described scenery, and impressive spectacles that leave one thinking, “I wonder how this could be engineered for the stage.” Sometimes its melodrama is downright operatic: “With a few cuts,” one thinks, “this could easily be made into a libretto.” As the villain struggles to hang on while dangling 200 feet above certain death, one thinks, “I know just how I would edit this scene, intercut with shots of the gargoyles and sculptures on the church’s facade.” You see where the idea comes from.

Perhaps, now that this has been done so many times, the time has come for film and theater people to give it a rest. It’s not only that they’ve already outdone each other every which way (though they have never outdone the novel). It’s that they have, some way or other, changed the story out of all semblance to its original shape and purpose. Try this experiment: Read this book yourself, and then check whether its ending resembles that of any of the competing film versions, all of which differ from each other. Who lives? Who dies? Is it happy or tragic? Which characters are left in, or combined with other characters to simplify the plot? What is it really about?

The first thing that may surprise you is that it isn’t narrowly focused on the hunchback, Quasimodo, who rings the bells at the church of Notre-Dame in Paris in the year of our Lord 1482. He is only one of several characters who treads the stage in this drama; though, because his particular tragedy is the master-stroke that powers the book to its terrible conclusion, he deserves to be the character singled out in the title of the English translation. Not all adaptations of this book single out Quasimodo, though; some of the films, for example, are named after (La) Esmeralda, the gypsy girl whose fate is intertwined with his. It is worth remembering, though, that Hugo’s original title suggests that the church of Notre-Dame and the city of Paris are really the main characters in this novel. I give fair warning to those who come to this book in search of cheap thrills and easy gratification: the story takes a while to pick up speed. In the meantime, Hugo spends several early chapters developing a high-resolution picture of what he believed Paris to be like in 1482: a place whose architectural marvels had all but disappeared, or been disfigured by later stylings, by the time of his writing; a place that can hardly be seen at all now, except in the images his words paint on the mind’s canvas.

Though it takes them almost the whole length of the book to figure it out—and I don’t think they ever work out all the details—Quasimodo and La Esmeralda were swapped in their infancy. The pretty girl was taken from her unmarried mother, a floozy whose career was fading with her looks when she poured all of her love into the child. The mother all but lost her mind when her dear baby Agnes was stolen by gypsies and replaced with a deformed child of their own. She rejected the little monster, and so he was brought up as a foundling by a priest at Notre-Dame: a grim, scholarly fellow named Claude Frollo. Claude has a tender side towards not only the hunchback but also a much younger brother of his own, who grows up to be a wastrel named Jehan. But it is, alas for both of them, not Jehan but Quasimodo who responds to the priest’s kindness with respect and devotion.

All this is prologue to the events of the story, in which a motherless gypsy girl named La Esmeralda is loved by three men but, tragically, she only loves a fourth who does not love her. Claude Frollo’s obsession with La Esmeralda is a psycho-study in diseased sexuality, religious torment, extortion, abuse of power, and life-destroying evil that in today’s world would spell “rapist.” Pierre Gringoire, who technically happens to be La Esmeralda’s husband (though she has never let him touch her), finds her attractive enough, but really thinks more of his own interests and of the trained goat that follows the girl around. Phoebus, the Captain of the King’s Archers whom La Esmeralda loves with single-minded devotion, has no interest in her except as a casual dalliance, while he remains betrothed to another young lady. Finally, it is Quasimodo, whose ugliness repels and frightens La Esmeralda, who loves her with a purity and tenderness that is never reciprocated. Get the thought out of your head that this is going to end happily. As light and flippant as Hugo’s writerly tone may be, THIS IS A TRAGEDY.

Only a few other pieces need to be put in place. One is a hermit woman whose cell overlooks the gibbet where Esmeralda is sentenced to hang. The hermit is the mother of poor baby Agnes, who has spent the past fifteen years mourning the child she believes to have been eaten by gypsies. She jeers with bitter glee at the news that the pretty dancing gypsy girl, about the same age as Agnes (for reasons I’m sure you can guess) will be led to the gallows. But before Esmeralda gets there, the hunchback snatches her from the hands of her captors and claims refuge for her in the church of Notre-Dame. Why, you ask, has Esmeralda been condemned to death? Partly for witchcraft—because superstitious folk are alarmed by the tricks she has trained her pet goat to perform, and because a boy stole a coin from a silly woman and left a leaf in its place, which was put down to witchcraft—and partly for murdering Phoebus, although in the first place it was Frollo who stabs him, and in the second place, Phoebus survives the attack. Expect to feel torn by helplessness and pity as the girl’s doom draws nearer, indifferent to the fact that her supposed victim is not only alive, but actually taking part in the hunt for her.

Though it is painfully obvious that Phoebus does not love her, La Esmeralda’s misplaced love for him finally seals her doom. Well—that and the spiteful malice of Claude Frollo, who hates and loves her with equal intensity. Between a disorderly mob attempting to rescue her from the King’s justice, and a devoted hunchback (who, unfortunately, is as deaf as he is deformed) mistaking them for a disorderly mob trying to lynch her, the square in front of the cathedral becomes a bloodbath of gruesome violence and death—and this hastens, rather than prevents, the girl’s death. And while most of the principal characters die in the climactic pages of the book, or shortly thereafter, the few who survive leave a bitter flavor in the reader’s mouth. Only the final twist, in the chapter titled “The Hunchback’s Marriage,” shades the aftertaste of sadness back towards the sweet end of bittersweetness. But in case I haven’t emphasized it enough, let me remind you once more that THIS IS A TRAGEDY. Accept no Disney substitutes, which leave room for a cheerful song-and-dance number and a straight-to-video sequel. If you haven’t felt yourself sighing at the memory of this story and its ending, even days after finishing it, you haven’t really experienced The Hunchback of Notre Dame . Read the book; or, if that’s to slow for you, listen to the audio-book.

Notre-Dame de Paris was the fourth of Victor Hugo’s eight novels. The only other one that is now widely read in the English-speaking world was his next novel, Les Misérables (1862), written over thirty years later. Though his criticism of royalty and corrupt leadership is indeed much milder in this earlier novel, that is another element you can expect in this book, which (besides a wicked priest) also features a merciless king, a deaf judge, a torture-happy inquisitor, and a doctor who extorts money out of his patients. Hugo’s social conscience will hardly be a surprise to anyone familiar with his other great novel. Hugo (1802-85) is also admired for his poetry, for plays such as Ruy Blas , and for several novels inspired by his off-and-on exile to the Isle of Guernsey. Now that I have tasted the pleasures of Hugo’s storytelling style, I hope and expect to report more of my discoveries among his works.

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Wayfaring Flaneur

Book Review: “The Hunchback of Notre-Dame” by Victor Hugo

I picked this as the next book to read off my shelf because I wanted a change and I figured old French novels are sometimes a good palette cleanser. I enjoyed The Phantom of the Opera and The Count of Monte Cristo is one of my favorite books. What I forgot when I forged ahead was that my edition being a small pretty book meant it was longer than it appeared. The Hunchback of Notre-Dame is a long and Victor Hugo was clearly paid by the word. So it took me a while to trudge through what a normal-sized copy would be over 900 pages. The voice of the book, or the tone of the narrator was something I found very charming. It felt like it was a ye olde elegant noble person leading the reader through the story with the occasional breaks of:

“If the reader consent, we shall cross the threshold of the Great Hall together. Let me endeavour to reproduce the impression made on his senses as we struggle through the surging crowd in frock, smock, jerkin, doublet, and every conceivable dress of the period. “

These polite little interjections to the reader were quite fun. It truly felt like Victor Hugo is doing his utmost to lead readers on a tour of old Paris and show them the things he loved the most, especially the architecture.

The book is historical-esq fiction that feels doubly historical fiction now. It was published in 1831 but was set in the 15th century aka the 1400’s. It was originally entitled Notre-Dame de Paris (Our Lady of Paris) which may explain why while I was in Paris many tours I went on cited the book’s main character as the building of Notre-Dame itself. Which is one of the reasons I’ve been itching to read it. I just didn’t realize I’d signed myself up for Ulysses again.

“Paris, viewed from the towers of Notre Dame in the cool dawn of a summer morning, is a delectable and a magnificent sight; and the Paris of that period must have been eminently so.”

By that, I mean that Ulysses is on a base level a walking tour of Dublin. And Victor Hugo in parts takes the reader on long drawn out tours of 15th century Paris. And both are long .

But there was a lot of humor in the books which I enjoyed. Like the occasional sass:

“This proves, moreover, that a man may be of a fine genius, and yet understand nothing of an art which he has not studied. “ a jab at Voltaire for saying there were only 4 nice buildings in Paris of any worth.

The opening takes that sass and runs with it. The city of Paris in 1482 is all a buzz for the Festival of Fools. There’s a couple of events including a “mystery” and tons of people choose this over all the other events happening. And we get an idea of the people who’ve shown up because of the university students who’ve climbed up high in the building and begin to heckle everyone from the windows.

I really loved the idea of an introduction of characters via a chorus of hecklers. I did, however, feel bad for the poet, Pierre Gringoire, who was so excited for his mystery which was a play to be shown. The guests were also so excited they threatened to start murdering the actors if the show didn’t start immediately. But the audience had the attention span of a goldfish. (Which is interesting since it seems that’s just another thing people always complain about. Just the “reason” changes.) He was constantly turning to people practically begging them to pay attention to what he’d poured his soul into. This was because people in the crowd are distracted by the entrance of “important” figures entering the premise and being announced. Then someone suggested that instead, it’d be more fun to create a Pope of Fools. They went to find the ugliest person they could to fill this role. This is when we start to meet our familiar characters. (for those of us who’ve seen the Disney-fied version)

We meet Quasimodo and hear in the background an introduction of Esmerelda. But since we’re following a very frustrated Gringoire it takes us a moment to get to each. Quasimodo is instantly crowned the Pope of Fools and despite the general populace’s hatred for him he loves the treatment of being the Pope of Fools.

“One would have said he was a giant that had been broken and awkwardly mended.”

The 20 year old bell-ringer of Notre-Dame is Deaf. His social circle has greatly decreased because of it so he only speaks to his adoptive father through sign language, the bells, and the statues of Notre-Dame. But the people tend to think that Quasimodo is a demon who is just waiting to take the archdeacon away to hell.

Esmerelda is a girl of 16 who dances in the streets and who is so lovely she always draws a crowd. She’s also taught her goat Djali tricks like how to tell time, the date, and to impersonate people. Which makes some accuse her of witchcraft, while her Roma background also draws hate from the local recluse whenever she’s near. Despite hate for her alleged witchcraft and background she still is well loved.

Out of all the differences between the Disney movie and the book was that I didn’t expect to not out right hate with every fiber of my being Claude Frollo. I ended up hating a character Disney redeemed more. Much to my surprise. So let’s talk about the archdeacon Claude Frollo. Disney cut out all the bits of the story that made him…human.

In the book, he’s a huge nerd. Spent all his childhood reading until he mastered almost everything he could read and became a member of the church eventually becoming the archdeacon. Then a plague hit his home town and when he went to see if his family survived he learned his parents had died but his baby brother was still there all alone. At 19 he takes in his little baby brother, Jehan, becoming a pseudo-parent and doted on the baby with all the love and energy he could. This sadly ended up making his little brother absolutely spoiled. (He’s one of those earlier hecklers) He only visits to ask his brother for money so he can go get drunk with his buddies and flirt. And when his brother asks if he’s been studying since he’s a 16-year-old university student he says he has no supplies to study with.

But Claude Frollo’s love for his brother also gave him a soft spot for small children and led him to adopt and name a toddler that showed up in a place of foundlings that everyone claimed was a demon and wanted to murder. This, of course, was 4 year old Quasimodo. He adopted Quasimodo the same year he took in his baby brother. He’s also older but not nearly as old as the movie made him out to be. He’s thirty-five and bald but that seems to be more or less due to stress. He’s spent his whole life trying to raise the boys to be scholars and worldly men and has failed. His little brother by blood has no interest and spends more money then he can drink and is essentially a rebellious teenager and Quasimodo, for the time period I suppose, becomes difficult for Frollo to teach due to his hearing loss caused by ringing the bells and the fact that society automatically thinks him evil because of how he looks. This leads Frollo to turn away from traditional things and start to research black magic and alchemy. (And thus I assume his haunted scary looks and balding. Probably from ripping out his hair over his unruly children that he raised more or less on his own.)

Quasimodo and Esmeralda are linked within the book due to their childhood. Esmeralda was the baby of a woman who had spent most of her life as a prostitute and her baby girl became the only bright thing in her life. Until one day the baby was taken away and Quasimodo, a 4-year-old unnamed toddler, was left in the baby’s place like a changing. Horrified she flipped out and the villagers took Quasimodo away to Paris to leave in the place of foundlings and the poor women spent her life looking for and crying over her lost child, eventually ending up in a cell in Paris to just sit, cry, and pray to die. 

Now our poet from the beginning finds his story constantly interrupted and gives up as the audience has left. So after seeing Esmerelda out dancing with her highly trained highly intelligent goat, he decides to follow her. He thinks a nice girl like that might know where he can eat or sleep or at least may pity him enough to help. On her walk however, she gets attacked by two men who try and carry her off. One of them is Quasimodo, and the poet calls for help, and the captain of the King’s archers, Phoebus de Châteaupers comes in a hurry on his horse. He saves Esmeralda and captures Quasimodo but not his accomplice.

“Here Phoebus, whose imagination was only tolerably active, began to be rather at a loss how to find a means of extricating himself for his prowess.”

Phoebus in the book is a villain which is a huge change and shocker for those who’ve seen only the Disney version. He got arguably the biggest change. Phoebus is essentially a cliche frat bro style character, a womanizer. He’s a grown man preying on girls much younger than him. He knows every word and phrase to make any woman or girl who likes him because of his fancy clothes and pretty face turn to putty in his hands so he can take advantage of them. He’s also of noble blood and already engaged to his cousin Fleur-de-Lys de Gondelaurier. But he’s bored with his fiancé and doing what is expected of him so he’s constantly is running off with other women telling them he loves them and only them. Or out drinking with teenagers like Jehan. He’s had so much practice lying to women that it sounds real. This would be one thing if it was just him being a flirt but he also uses it to manipulate women into sleeping with him. Like Esmeralda. Who, by the way, as a reminder is only 16. The same age as Jehan. But she’s in love with him because he saved her and he seems nice but really he just wants to sleep with her even though she’s superstitious and believes that if she loses her virginity she’ll never find her parents. He manages to emotionally blackmail her essentially saying she must not love him if she doesn’t want to sleep with him and she’s so blinded by her feelings that she gives in. UNTIL!

Frollo jumps out of a closet and stabs him.

Like, I know Frollo is a creep but I honestly hate Phoebus so much more than I hate Frollo, and for him to suddenly appear and stab someone emotionally manipulating a girl into doing something she doesn’t really want to do gave me a little hope for the confused archdeacon who doesn’t understand his emotions.

He did however completely ruin it by later saying she had to choose between death and him and trying to force himself on her….but she also stupidly still always said she is in love with Phoebus to the point it sent her to the gallows. Phoebus survived his stabbing and instead of clearing Esmeralda’s name and being like nah she didn’t stab me so don’t kill her. Instead, he just is like yikes, let me just go back inside and try to take a look down my fiancé’s shirt instead of watching a girl die for me.

Poor Esmeralda is offered to be saved multiple times. Frollo gives her long speeches about his love for her and explains his inner turmoil as someone whose supposed to never be in a relationship dealing with falling in love for the first time in his life. I mean he’s still too old for her. She’s the same age as his baby brother. But for a classic novel, it’s arguable. He throws himself at her feet, stabs himself when she’s hurt, and is just an overly dramatic mess. He doesn’t know what to do with his romantic feelings or lust or the fact that he has fears that she’s a demonic creature meant to pull him from his job in the church but he doesn’t care anymore and just wants her to smile at him.

“Oh! to love a woman – to be a priest – to be hated – to love her with all the fury of your soul – to feel that you would give for the least of her smiles your blood, your vitals, your reputation, your salvation, immortality and eternity, this life and the other—”

At one of his offerings to save her, since she gets put in a position of death multiple times, he just asks her if she will at least say she doesn’t hate him and he’ll save her and to please not utter Pheobus’s name. She says she will always love Pheobus and only him and calls Frollo an assassin. I just can’t wrap my head around it other than to call it the stubbornness of being a teenager.

Now for the biggest difference between stories and some huge spoilers.

People tend to think the little mermaid as a fool in love. But Esmeralda is a bigger fool. She only fights one person off with a sword and that’s Frollo. I feel utterly let down on a character I thought was super cool as a kid because of Disney. When she’s actually is just a love sick fool who loves an awful human who doesn’t even love her back. I wanted her to save herself and to fight for what she believed in rather than what I got. Esmeralda doesn’t do much other than dance and sing and teach her cute little goat how to tell time and do tricks. She does save people and show compassion but in a 900 page book it doesn’t happen often and most of the time she’s in danger. She has one goal pre-Phoebus which is to find her parents but she throws it away for a chance to be with Phoebus. Who she just met. They interact when he saves her for a brief moment. Then when he sees her dancing and his fiancé wants a closer look at her so he invites her into the house. And then when he goes on a “date” with her to try to a hotel so he can add her to his conquest list. That’s it. They barely talk throughout the whole story, except when he tries to pressure her into having sex with him. Then Quasimodo rescues her but she never gets over the way he looks and he can tell so he usually hides from her.

Now other than characters that were cut out of the Disney version: the poet, the mother, the little spoiled brother. There was also a large amount of death that was cut out as well. Quasimodo murders the vagabonds (Esmerelda and the poets adoptive family) who try to storm Notre-Dame to rescue their beloved Esmeralda but due to not understanding he fears they’ve come to take her away to hang her. Many people in Paris think this is why they stormed the place including the king. So he sends his people to clean up the problem (kill more of the vagabonds) and drag out Esmeralda and hang her. In this skirmish between the vagabonds and Quasimodo, Quasimodo’s adoptive brother Jehan who had joined with the vagabonds in teenage rebellion against his brother scales the walls of Notre-Dame, and Quasimodo strips him and throws him over the edge where he has a more detailed murdered than any other character which seems to be a diss on his wasted education and life. Frollo see’s Jehan’s body and it’s a huge blow.

Esmeralda escapes of her own volition and gets picked up by the poet who is her fake husband who has come to rescue…her goat. She clings to him and he looks between her and the goat cuddling against him and he picks the goat. Leaving Esmeralda with his companion, Frollo who gives her one final chance which she turns down. So he leaves her with the woman crying over her lost daughter. She hates Esmeralda thinking since Esmeralda is Roma and she blames the Roma for her missing daughter. They realize they’re who’ve they’ve been looking for so her mother takes her into her cell and tries to hide her. She spends their entire reunion carrying her daughter around and crying and telling her how much she’s missed her and loves her. I really really hoped that somehow this would be Esmeralda’s happy ending. She gets returned to her family and that’s it. She saved by family. They escape the town and go home. Because everything at this point is made up of misunderstandings and they just pile up to a bleak ending. Oh how I wanted that ending.

The mother manages to send the soldiers off and believe that she’s alone. But then Phoebus walks by and Esmeralda cries out for him, he doesn’t hear her and keeps going but the other guards do and pull both mother and daughter out. Her mother fights like a bear to try and save her daughter but they push her back, she hits the cobblestone and dies. This upset me so much I slammed my book shut and I had to sit for a moment.

Quasimodo tries to find Esmeralda after all the carnage he’s inflicted and spots Frollo back at Notre-Dame looking out into the distance and laughing a sort of hysterical laugh, realizes he’s laughing over someone being hung, realizes it’s Esmeralda and Quasimodo pushes Frollo off the edge of Notre-Dame. Frollo saves himself, but eventually loses his grip and falls the rest of the way to his death. No one saves Esmeralda and she’s hung and buried in a tomb. Quasimodo cries over his lost ones and his “marriage” chapter is that in Esmeralda’s tomb there’s another skeleton holding onto her like lovers with a curved back.

So the only people who live are: Pheobus who gets married (his own nightmare but I think he deserves worse possibly the same fate as Jehan would’ve made me happy), the poet, and the goat. Like the ending is very very bleak and much sadder than I expected. Which I think is the point. Victor Hugo wrote this book with a goal in mind to save the great gothic Notre-Dame that he thought people didn’t love anymore because gothic architecture was out of style. So he wrote this long novel to try and save it. And it worked. Ask any tour guide near Notre-Dame and they’ll mention it. Because of this book Notre-Dame got the funding it needed for renovations.

It’s really interesting how Victor Hugo managed to take what at first I took as a comedic piece that was a conversation about Paris and the people in it with some sass and pride for his city and to lead the reader into a very dark somewhat desolate end where the only comfort remained in the melancholy solace of Notre-Dame. While I’m not happy with the ending and even less happy with Disney taking an abusive character and deciding to make him the love interest in their adaptation I do think the book is good, in a very haunting way that creeps up on you. He also supposits a very interesting theory that the printing press would destroy the beaut and art of architecture. Which is such an interesting concern, especially for a writer.

Depending on which translation you get please note that some of the language might be jarring due to different meanings from the time which have become slurs. 

Have you read The Hunchback of Notre-Dame? What did you think? Do you have a favorite French classic?

If you want to give it a try you can find a copy on Bookshop which will allow you to support local bookstores. You can find a copy of it in my Bookshop review list here . 

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THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME

by Victor Hugo & adapted by Tim Wynne-Jones & illustrated by Bill Slavin ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1997

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (40 pp.; $15.95; Sept. 1997; 0-531- 30055-2): A storybook retelling of Hugo's classic of the lonely bellringer and his hopeless love for the beautiful gypsy girl, Esmerelda, whom he rescues from hanging and the evil archdeacon Dom Frollo and reunites with her mother. While remaining relatively faithful to the original, this version from Wynne- Jones (The Maestro, 1996, etc.) is always competent, but never compelling. Slavin creates lovely illustrations, but his pale washes leave even the most festive scenes sedate. The volume lacks power or emotion; adults seeking an alternative—any alternative—to the Disney film may find that this one hardly competes for the hearts and minds of the target audience. (Fiction. 5-8)

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1997

ISBN: 0-531-30055-2

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Orchard

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1997

CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S

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BOOK REVIEW

by Victor Hugo ; adapted by Marcia Williams ; illustrated by Marcia Williams

I WISH YOU MORE

by Amy Krouse Rosenthal ; illustrated by Tom Lichtenheld ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 2015

Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity.

A collection of parental wishes for a child.

It starts out simply enough: two children run pell-mell across an open field, one holding a high-flying kite with the line “I wish you more ups than downs.” But on subsequent pages, some of the analogous concepts are confusing or ambiguous. The line “I wish you more tippy-toes than deep” accompanies a picture of a boy happily swimming in a pool. His feet are visible, but it's not clear whether he's floating in the deep end or standing in the shallow. Then there's a picture of a boy on a beach, his pockets bulging with driftwood and colorful shells, looking frustrated that his pockets won't hold the rest of his beachcombing treasures, which lie tantalizingly before him on the sand. The line reads: “I wish you more treasures than pockets.” Most children will feel the better wish would be that he had just the right amount of pockets for his treasures. Some of the wordplay, such as “more can than knot” and “more pause than fast-forward,” will tickle older readers with their accompanying, comical illustrations. The beautifully simple pictures are a sweet, kid- and parent-appealing blend of comic-strip style and fine art; the cast of children depicted is commendably multiethnic.

Pub Date: April 1, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-4521-2699-9

Publisher: Chronicle Books

Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015

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adapted by Rachel Isadora & illustrated by Rachel Isadora ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2008

Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your dreads! Isadora once again plies her hand using colorful, textured collages to depict her fourth fairy tale relocated to Africa. The narrative follows the basic story line: Taken by an evil sorceress at birth, Rapunzel is imprisoned in a tower; Rapunzel and the prince “get married” in the tower and she gets pregnant. The sorceress cuts off Rapunzel’s hair and tricks the prince, who throws himself from the tower and is blinded by thorns. The terse ending states: “The prince led Rapunzel and their twins to his kingdom, where they were received with great joy and lived happily every after.” Facial features, clothing, dreadlocks, vultures and the prince riding a zebra convey a generic African setting, but at times, the mixture of patterns and textures obfuscates the scenes. The textile and grain characteristic of the hewn art lacks the elegant romance of Zelinksy’s Caldecott version. Not a first purchase, but useful in comparing renditions to incorporate a multicultural aspect. (Picture book/fairy tale. 6-8)

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2008

ISBN: 978-0-399-24772-9

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Putnam

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2008

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by Rachel Isadora ; illustrated by Rachel Isadora

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Books: A true story

Book reviews and some (mostly funny) true stories of my life.

Book Review: The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo

March 6, 2012 By Jessica Filed Under: Book Review 2 Comments

The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

In the vaulted Gothic towers of Notre-Dame lives Quasimodo, the hunchbacked bellringer. Mocked and shunned for his appearance, he is pitied only by Esmerelda, a beautiful gypsy dancer to whom he becomes completely devoted. Esmerelda, however, has also attracted the attention of the sinister archdeacon Claude Frollo, and when she rejects his lecherous approaches, Frollo hatches a plot to destroy her that only Quasimodo can prevent. Victor Hugo's sensational, evocative novel brings life to the medieval Paris he loved, and mourns its passing in one of the greatest historical romances of the nineteenth century.

Everything in The Hunchback of Notre-Dame is a fascinating juxtaposition of the grotesque and the sublime – the speech, the characters, the setting. I felt like the whole point of the story was to show that architecture was the only good thing that came from the Middle Ages so for heaven’s sake, don’t tear those buildings down! We could never build something like that again! This book saved the Notre Dame Cathedral by giving people a reason to care about it and showing how Gothic architecture was beautiful even though it was different (which is a theme in the novel that applies to the characters as well). Victor Hugo likes lists that are very, very long full of even longer names and I found myself falling asleep a lot in the first half of the book. Then suddenly I get hit over the head by this steamy, passionate, action-packed, gruesomely violent second half of the novel complete with forbidden love. Didn’t see that coming. I found it surprisingly modern in that there are a lot elements in this story that are popular in novels, especially young adult ones, today.  Though I can’t help but think that the girl would have been turned on by the whole forbidden/creepy love thing if it had been written today instead of her being horrified by it. And can I just say how shocked I was when he used the word “vampire” AND talked about Nicolas Flamel?  There was some great sarcastic humor in here that had me smiling. This was Hugo’s first novel after writing plays and it reads like one. There are lots of action scenes and he writes an excellent mob. He almost makes me want to grab a pitchfork. I walked away from this book thinking about what beauty and love really are.

Content Rating : Medium , for sensuality and violence.

About Victor Hugo

Victor Marie Hugo (26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French poet, novelist, and dramatist of the Romantic movement. He is considered one of the greatest and best known French writers. In France, Hugo's literary fame comes first from his poetry but also rests upon his novels and his dramatic achievements. Among many volumes of poetry, Les Contemplations and La Légende des siècles stand particularly high in critical esteem. Outside France, his best-known works are the novels Les Misérables, 1862, and Notre-Dame de Paris, 1831 (known in English as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame). Though a committed royalist when he was young, Hugo's views changed as the decades passed; he became a passionate supporter of republicanism, and his work touches upon most of the political and social issues and artistic trends of his time. He was buried in the Panthéon.

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Book Review

The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo / Book Review

Published 24/02/2024 · Updated 26/02/2024

Recently I read F alling by Emma Kavanagh , and there was a sentence in the book: It would have been so funny if it was not so damn sad. I don’t know if it is an original sentence because I cannot recollect where, but I have heard the sentence somewhere — but the point is that it describes The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo perfectly.

All those events happening in the book were hilarious — a priest falling in love with a gypsy, sacrificing all his hard-earned respect and authority to get a girl, the king of fools deformed man who becomes the savior of the gypsy and fights the entire army alone, and then goes against his brother, knowing that the girl cannot even look at his ridiculous face, husband of gypsy who prefer goat over girl, and wild crowd cheering for death, and finally the king himself — it all build up a bizarre incident.

But it is terribly sad. Let’s explore.

Table of Contents

It’s not about Hunchback

The title can be misleading. Hunchback is not in the book that much. To clarify, I read the unabridged version, and I think I should have read the abridged version. Because I am really not that interested learning about Paris.

The book’s central figure is Notre Dame. Not the Hunchback. If you go into it to find a tragic tale, you would have to go through a detailed description of how Paris was built, its culture, its architecture, market, and environment, and then Victor Hugo describes Notre Dame in absurd detail.

For many, those chapters could be boring, and for many, those chapters are the highlight of the book. The story is kind of inspired by Beauty and the Beast. However, there are two beasts here — one is ugly from the inside, and another one is ugly from the outside. Both fail to win the girl — and the reason seems to be that the girl likes the man in uniform. The man, though, forgets about her after one half-night–stand.

But I am not going to look at that angle because I believe my opinion would be incorrect. But let me summarise the story as I read it so you can make up your mind.

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The Hunchback of Notre Dame summary

There is a girl. Amazingly wild and carefree girl. She is totally ‘not like other girls’ type girl.

A priest who believes in God and Science and thinks biology is stupidity — he fall in love at first sight. However, if it was love or lust, it cannot be decided because if it was lust, he could have easily assaulted her. But he keeps trying to make her fall in love with him, by force, though. He does not have any rizz.

Then there is Hunchback, an ugly creature, with deformed body, deaf but powerful. He also falls in love with her, but I guess he is in love with her kindness, as she was the only one who showed some compassion towards him.

The girl falls in love with the Captain of the City Watch. Priest attacks the Captain, and the Watch blames it on the girl. The girl is given the death punishment. Hunchback protects her by giving her sanctuary in Notre Dame (which is some ancient rule, so anyone taken to the sanctuary is protected by King, and if you attack the girl, you are against the King).

To say more will be spoiling the ending.

What does this mean?

After reading the book, I thought about what I would write in the review. What the book explores, except Paris. The answer is a big blank.

I do not have anything to explain or uncover here. The book is pretty straightforward. Victor tells you all about Paris and Notre Dame, and then it tells you the story of people falling in love with a crazy girl and how it destroys each one’s life. There is no happy ending for anyone in this book. Everyone suffers. They all were complicated characters.

Maybe that is what the story means — a young girl falling prey to the 3 men. Each wanted her to love him; one wanted kindness, one wanted love, and one wanted the body.

Or it could be the fall of a good, kind-hearted man when the love strikes. Or it could be how once you fall in love, all other things become so irrelevant that you give up them in an instant. Or love could give you the courage to go against the one you could never go.

The priest goes against his lessons and religious ideologies — and the deformed man goes against his creator (the one who adopted him, gave him food and a place to stay, the one who understands him). One is breaking the religion, while the second one is kind of fighting God in his little metaphorical way. Or it could be that it does not matter if you are the most respected person or the most disgusted person; you cannot win love by force or by kindness. It has to come naturally, and the girl does not love any of them.

Do I recommend The Hunchback of Notre Dame?

Yes… However, if you are not interested in getting a lecture on Paris, please buy an abridged version. It would be much better edited.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Book review of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and exploration of what was this book supposed to say?

Author: Victor Hugo

Faizan Fahim

Hello, welcome to this blog. Just writing reviews of the book I like. Also, favorite quotes, poetry, memes, sometimes other topics too, but always related to literature. So join me on Twitter to talk to me.

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• Previous story  Are You Afraid of the Dark by Sidney Sheldon // Book Review

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