Melinda

Bizarre... wants the thematic weight and explicit sexuality of The Handmaid's Tale with all of the unsophistication of YA..

surprisingly not that bad but if I were the main character and the only visual descriptor the narrator could come up with for me was “crooked nose” I think I'd kill myself

I know the artlessness is intentional and that it still stands to gain something from presenting itself as a novel, but I can't shake the feeling that a fully-actualized work would be able to submit a stronger case for why it's not a longform article. Develops complexity by spurning generic expectations and yet chooses not to engage with the features of fiction-writing with real dynamic potential, that lend real novels legitimacy and reward close analysis. Definitely a book that is much more Important than it is Good

boring ass exposition...this bitch has been watching bridgerton the gag is up cassandra

One of those very few novels that manages to actualize a vision so tremendous in scope and complexity. At once an examination of the nature and mechanisms of suffering; a portrait of humanity's major psychological archetypes; occasionally a 25-page eminently verbose political history of the Parisian sewer system; and always a testament to the resilience of the human spirit. Jean Valjean is you and me and everyone who has ever lived, everyone who thinks and feels and loves and tries to make something of themselves in the world they wake up in. We encounter so much meaning in our lives and have so little time with which to contemplate it.

an achievement of world literature that places Hugo squarely alongside the likes of Shakespeare/Cervantes/Tolstoy and probably my top 3 favorites ever. kind of evil that the musical has eclipsed the book in cultural ubiquity but also not because it's so important that it at least be Somewhere even if that Somewhere must include anne hathaway