| In fact, it is perhaps the loosest, baggiest monster of all those great 19th century novels | The effect is like having a retired professor camping out in your living room, always ready with an impromptu lecture or two |
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| These political lectures are delivered in a polemical, disjointed style which nuances are hard to grasps unless you are intimately familiar with French history of the period | And these digressions tend to occur in the middle of the exciting parts of the main story |
The barricades still have resonance today.
| What happens at the barricade? In fact, it is perhaps the loosest, baggiest monster of all those great 19th century novels | Conscience is the highest justice, indeed |
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| Jean Valjean escapes through the sewer! But every time Hugo gets up on the soapbox to talk politics, he bores me to tears | Although his fate was very strange, he lived |