Les Miserables, book 2 "Cosette"

skygiants' post is here and has all kinds of delightful things about Socially Awkward St. Valjean!

I don't have nearly as funny things to say as skygiants, but here are my reactions:

-Waterloo was not nearly as bad as I was expecting it to be! I think because it was similar in length to the Bishop of Digne section, and I was steeled against it being much longer. However, I can't say that I read it super carefully. I also had this feeling like I needed visuals to really figure out what the heck he was saying for most of it.

-I keep worrying about Cosette having long-standing emotional issues because of her emotional (and physical) abuse by the Thenardiers! I guess, you know, she married Marius, which maybe is the answer to that. (Though I have always had a soft spot for stiff overly-idealistic socially-awkward Marius! No one else seems to, but I do! (Not that I'd want to marry him or anything, eek, but I just want to pat him on the head like a little puppydog, sort of the way Enjolras does in the musical.) We'll see what I think on this readthrough.)

-The convent section was a hard slog, even though I thought it was more interesting than either Waterloo or the Bishop. I think because I'd been steeled against Waterloo, and then to find out there was another long digression... Also, I had never read the bit about Madame Albertine before! Mme. Albertine is a mysterious nun who never speaks -- except one day when the young Duc de Rohan (peer, Prince, and eventually Archbishop) comes to preach, and she cries, "Ah, Auguste!" And that's all! Albertine never speaks again, and Hugo goes on to natter about something else. I NEED TO KNOW THE REST OF THIS STORY! I'm okay with never knowing what happens to Valjean's family, or the kids in the elephant, perhaps because I've known there was no resolution to those stories since I was a kid. But ALBERTINE! WHAT WAS HER DEAL?

-M. Fauchlevent is the best! There's this hilarious bit where the nuns are questioning Valjean to see if he would fit in the convent, and Fauchlevent answers all their questions, and Valjean doesn't say anything at all, and the nuns are all, "Valjean, what a great conversationalist!"

-I really enjoyed the bit where Hugo compares convents to prisons (...they're both damp impoverished places where people's freedom is extremely restricted, except the motivations and therefore results are totally different), which I found really interesting.