This one took me to two attempts two read as my mental abilities were
reduced by ill health and this at times can be a rather long winded book. The
book is actually broken into 11 books and I gave up after the first book last
time. This time I was determined to get to the end as I don’t like to be beaten
and in the end I think it was worth it. The story is a good one and although
the author goes of into what seem like long irrelevancies they mostly did have
a point in the end. The big exception seemed to be Book 3 which is seems to be
the authors views on the state of Architecture at the time (1850) and a
tourists guide to Paris at the end of the 15th century obviously
based on 1850. These two chapters did nothing for me at all and I think it is
safe to miss them unless you have a better knowledge of Paris or architecture
than me and find them interesting.
I have the Wordswoth Classics edition of the book and it is 397 pages long.
The typeface in the edition is rather small at about 44 lines per page so
beware.
The thing I did like about the writing style was it was very much like
reading a film. He seemed to give overviews of scenes and then focus in on the
detail. I don’t recall reading a descriptive book that had the same feel to it
before. It is certainly a completely different style to Wilkie Collins who was
the previous Classical Author I read.
I was interested to read the other reviews saying this was a great love
story. I am still not sure between who. Several characters seemed to love
Esmeralda. Claude Frollo seemed the strongest love to me but perhaps that
doesn’t count.