The Laughing Man

A lesser known of Hugo's work. This complex and wearying novel took me weeks to finish, and I really, really wanted to stop reading it. He'd get a character in a real solid fix and then spread pages and pages and pages rambling on about tides and moons and philosophy and religion and evolution and meaninglessness and...oh, yeah, the character. While he did have a point with most of the excess baggage he dumped into this novel, where at the end he drew together that wider picture for the reader's benefit, 1/3 of it could have been said so much quicker.

The book is often shockingly graphic and cruel, which also is intentional on Hugo's part, but which often turned my stomach...the atrocities of the story aren't meant to be enjoyed. If you enjoy certain passages of this book, especially a torture scene, there's something wrong. There are also some very sensual/sexual scenes.

But what really dropped my rating is how utterly meaningless it all seems to be. There is so much left to chance and then tossed over one's shoulder. Just when things start looking up for the MC, circumstances lead up to the ending events and everything just piled on him...but at that point I was so tired I didn't even care.

Hugo hates the British ruling class and that comes out loud and clear here. But not all of them are bad and becoming one is not a doom. Someone needed to set a good example, or to run away to a better land and be content as a poor man.

There is no content, no faith, no abiding love except a doomed one, no fatherhood in the man who has congratulated himself that he is a perfect father by choice. What's left is painfully bleak.

This book in a sentence: life without the hope and comfort of salvation is no life at all.