The Hunchback of Notre Dame

This classic by Victor Hugo is incredibly rich in detail and in characterisation. It’s a really good story, too. He does an interesting job of mocking the present by using the past, which is clever, and while he occasionally goes off onto great tangents about architecture, the story moves along most of the time at a pretty good pace.

His characters are fascinating – the bell-ringer, the gypsy-girl, the poet, the military man, the saint, the archdeacon, the little boy who eats the cake that the saint’s supposed to eat. I was glad there was a chapter devoted to what actually happened to the cake! The most important character is the cathedral itself, and Hugo gives plenty of detail about its structure and its history, as well as giving it a vital role in the plot, as saviour and as instigator, too, of some terrible things – after all, it was from the cathedral that the archdeacon saw Esmeralda, which sealed his fate, hers, Quasimodo’s as well.

He’s a really powerful writer, moving easily between satirical humour and pathos, using his detailed language to build a wonderful portrait of a particular time and place. He’s peopled an entire city, created a Paris which is really recognisable. This is why it’s such a classic, because no matter when it’s read, a place comes instantly alive.