Customer Reviews

Ninety-Three

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I have read four novels of Victor Hugo(and the synopsis of a fifth one)."Ninety Three" is the one in which he has reached perfection.
This specially applies to his plot-structure which is one of the best I've come across.
Hugo's rather naive artrifices and linking devices,which he used for making tight plot structures,but lent an unconvincing coherence in his earlier novels are absent-giving rise to an ingeniously linked sequence of events-where every event,keeping in mind the moral purposes which the novel seeks to achieve and the moral premises and goals of the characters,necessarily leads to the next event,to the climax and the resolution.

The theme,most appropriately pointed out by Ayn Rand is:"Man's loyalty to values."
How every character and every event expresses the theme is the greatest technical virtuosity a writer can achieve.
(However,as I see,Hugo's conscious intention was to dramatize:"The conflict between the logic behind the French Revolution and the philosophy behind the French Revolution.)

The plot-theme is:"The conflict which arises when a ruthless revolutionary(of the French Revolution)-a priest- is sent to keep a watch on a courageous but compassionate revolutionary-the only man he loves in this world- pursuing his granduncle-a proud,haughty,fanatical Royalist-with three innocent children and their helpless mother caught up in the cataclysm of this savage,frantic battle."

The merits of this novel are numerous.First of all,it is one of the best suspense-thrillers among the explicitly philosophical novels of the 19th century.
The neck-breaking speed with which the events suceed one other will keep you biting your nails till the last paragraph.

Secondly,every page-nay,every line in this novel gives a sense of something profoundly important,grand and dramatic.There isn't a sentence,conversation or scene which is trivial,silly or commonplace.Everything is grandiose,with a heightened sense of solemnity and tension.

Thirdly,one cannot overlook Hugo's heroic view of man.Whether it be a literate beggar or an illiterate peasant woman;a wicked rebel who can go to any lengths of inhumanity or a young soldier who has lead an insignificant life-every character has been endowed with such moral courage,focus on one's values and goals,strength of conviction,fearlesness,intransigent integrity and above all,such a capacity to value one's values-that one has to conclude that for Hugo,man was a Titan or a Giant-nothing less than a demi-God.

I would not call "Ninety Three" Hugo's greatest achievement since it's scope is rather small.Further,Hugo's usual obsession to insert long historical and political essays hadn't left him while he was writing "Ninety Three".Luckily,they maybe ignored.Anyway, I would recommend them for their fascinating poetry;compelling,powerful style and tremendous universal significance.

It is strange that although "Ninety Three" is a thoroughly interesting read-moreover glorifying humanitarianism,compassion and non-violence-it is not a well known novel.One of the common criticisms is that,as the critics say,it has "unreal characters" and an "exaggerated sense of heroism".
But let me tell you this reader:If you want to look up with a sense of worship to the image of the Ideal-the Ideal whose essential nature you might not have grasped;if you want to take pride in the fact that you are a man;if you want someone and something to affirm your deep-rooted conviction : "Yes,it is possible",then you ought to read Victor Hugo's "Ninety Three".

Hugo was a great novelist with a gift for mixing history with fiction. Just like Dumas, only Dumas is lighter entertainment and less depth. 1793 was a crucial year for the French Revolution, and hence for human History. The Revolutionary regime was unstable, faction-ridden, while the forces of the Ancien Regime were still fighting fiercely (read Balzac's "Les Chouanes" and "A Murky Business" for other great references to alter years of this period). It is also a story of generational fighting, as well as an account of heroism in both sides.

The Marquis of Lantenac is an old aristocrat fighting to restore the Regime, in the La Vendée uprising. He faces his nephew, the Vicomte of Gauvain, who fights for the Revolution. The scenery is the beautiful Bretagne, in Northern France. Hugo rounds up the story magnificently, explaining the reader what is going on in Paris with the different factions and leaders. So the story is not isolated from main historical events. These give it a full context, and in turn the story enlightens us about what the fight is about. The climax comes in the battle of La Tourgue, where uncle and nephew face each other in a dramatic fight. The revolutionaries win, but Lantenac returns to a castle, to rescue three children caught in a fire. He is imprisoned, and here the drama reaches its highest: Gauvain is told to execute his uncle. The ending is a hard confrontation between political reason and personal values, a subject explored in great literature since "Antigona", by Sofocles. It's clear why this eternal confrontation is tragic: no solution is devoid of an extremely high price. A less-known but excellent work by one of the best novelists there has been.

Hugo again outdoes himself. His ability to go into details, without losing his reader, compares with Hemingway's. But this is not to say that his focus on the detail is at the expense of the big picture. Just the opposite. Ninety-three gives an overall perspective of the French Revolution that I have never realized (not that I claim to be an expert on the subject). Moreover, the battles between the blues (advocates of the Republic) and the whites (the royalist) are gripping. His characters are awe inspiring and the story as a whole moves very well. This is book is a real treat.

Ninety-three is a fast-paced, action packed novel by an author who knew how to deprive one of sleep due to the novel's thrill and suspense. The characters and events are masterfully intertwined in order to build up suspense even up to the very last two paragraphs. Political symbolisms clearly exist, and the main characters are symbols of their own political standpoints and views of humanism. Take very good notice of their physical descriptions and associate them with the ideas of that momentous epoch. There was a momentary lapse of action, which I believe was necessry in order to portray to the reader a glimpse of the events in Paris during that tumultuous year of the Reign of Terror. In fact, one of my favorite scenes is when Robespierre, Danton, and Marat-perhaps the greatest (and most tragic) firgures of the Revolution-were having a little 'chat.' Hugo really knew how to mess with history. The drama is perhaps the greatest quality of this novel. You don't have to know anything about the Revolution to love this book.

This book show-cases some of the most brilliant writing I've ever read. Hugo is a literary God.

The events of Ninety-Three occur during (and somewhat define) the period of the French Revolution. For this reason, all the characters' actions are tremendously important. The fate of a large part of the world literally hangs on their actions. Toward the end of the book, during the battle at La Tourgue, you can almost see the future itself, balanced on a knife-edge, swaying back and forth with the actions of the main characters.

The characters in Ninety-Three are giants among men. Lantenac, Gauvain, Cimourdain -- all are heroic in their own way. Even minor characters like Radoub the soldier, Tellmarch the beggar, and Halmalo the sailor are honourable and admirable people.

There are scenes in Ninety-Three that are among the best I've read anywhere. (The "loose cannon" on the Claymore and the fire at La Tourgue being good examples.)

The only problem I had in reading Ninety-Three was one of my own making. Hugo makes a lot of historical or mythological references, especially in describing the Convention in Paris, which I didn't fully understand. That was due only to a lack of knowledge on my part -- it is no criticism of Hugo's descriptive genius. I am sure that when I read it next time (as I will), I will take more from the reading.

Ninety-Three is just about perfect. Read it.

I admit, I prefer Les Mis and Notre Dame de Paris to 93. First, I expected something different than what I got. 93 is about the Marquis de Lantenac, his nephew Gauvain, and Cimourdain, Gauvain's childhood tutor. Gavain and Cimourdain are on the side of Robespierre and the Revolution, the Marquis is definately not. The ideals of the revolution clash with neccesity, and this makes the Civil War we hear little about extremely brutal(one side uses the motto, "No Quarter", the other uses "No mercy"). At any rate, along with a great deal of wonderfully detailed descriptions of a cannon rolling around on a ship in a storm, the tumultuous Convention hall, and a few other things, there are also a great deal of clever sayings. The dialogue between Robespierre, Marat, and Danton is wonderful, though I wished and expected them to be the main characters...they weren't.

This is a step up from "A Tale of Two Cities" when one is considering historical context(Tale of Two Cities is nearly totally one sided in it's opposition to the Revolution, not describing the tremendous danger to Paris posed by Berlin, London, and rebels in Normandy). However I suppose Tale of Two Cities is a step up as far as literary merit.

Victor Hugo is my all-time-favorite novelist. Les Miserables, The Hunchback of Nolte Dame, and Ninety-Three are his three best and my top three favorites. Read Ninety-Three for a real treat. His characters are giants, heroes! Nobody but nobody can out-do Hugo on plot construction. Ninety-Three is an excellent introduction to Hugo. Just witness the way he takes such seemingly disparate stories and blends them into one of the greatest climaxes in all of literature. This is one of those edge-of-your-seat, can't-put-it-down novels that will keep you up late at night. I just can't recomment it high enough!

Mike Porter

This is another one of those books that has been on my reading list forever, and I picked it up several times before in the past before finally getting around to finishing it now.

Like a lot of classic books, then isn't a bad read at all, but it's not written in the modern style and therefore requires a bit of discipline to get started before you get hooked by the plot. If you can make it past the first 50 pages, you'll be hooked.

Although to be honest, I think it also helped that I'm a little bit more knowledgeable about the French Revolution than I was a couple years before. This is a book on the French Revolution by a French author, and so gets a little more into the intricacies of the Revolution than say "A Tale of Two Cities". The book starts out in the middle of the civil war out in provinces in 1793, and the reader is more or less just thrown into the action. It can be a little bit confusing.

The action then swings back to Paris, and if you don't know who Robespierre, Danton, or Marat were, then it is going to get even more confusing. You don't have to be a scholar to understand this book (I'm certainly not), but a passing knowledge of the major figures of the French Revolution is certainly helpful.

Victor Hugo published this book in 1874, shortly after the Paris Commune, which is one of the reasons usually given for why this book never became as successful or as well known as some of his other classics; the theory being that after the events of the Paris Commune the French public was in no mood for a book which idealized the turbulent times of the original French Revolution.

(Victor Hugo himself, although his radical legacy is often forgotten these days, was one of the leaders of the movement for amnesty of the Paris Communards, for which he once had his house stoned by a conservative mob. He wrote poems about the Commune martyrs, and he had a long friendship (and rumored sexual liaison) with Louise Michel, the most famous of the Commune revolutionaries.)

In fact the quick eyed reader can catch a couple of passing references to the Paris Commune of 1871, such as when Victor Hugo talks about how men were buried alive in the fighting of 1793, and then adds "we have seen a return to this recently" ( a reference to the Paris Communards, who were thrown into mass graves and buried alive by the Versailles forces).

But passing references to the Paris Commune are just that: brief and passing. This is a book about 1793.

Although it has been several years since I read "Les Miserables", I remember one of the major themes of that book was the legacy of the French Revolution, and whether it was possible to separate the ideals of the revolution from its excesses. Needless to say this is a theme Hugo continues even more so in "Ninety-Three".

(Here again a little digression might be in order, because I have noticed in conversation that many people who are familiar with "Les Miserables" only through the Broadway musical seem to think the barricade scene at the end of that book takes place during the French Revolution. It does not. In addition to what we think of as THE French Revolution (1789-1793), France also underwent 3 other Revolutions in the 19th Century: 1830, 1848, and 1871 (the Paris Commune).

But Revolutions do not come out of nowhere, and so in the years in between major revolutions there were growing tensions, street demonstrations, and occasionally failed uprisings. The barricade scene in "Les Miserables" takes place during one of these failed uprisings in 1832, an incident so minor it doesn't usually even make the history books. Which is of course part of the tragedy of the story.)

Many other parts of "Ninety Three" are also reminiscent of "Les Miserables". The revolutionary and former priest Cimourdian, whose strict sense of justice and duty forbid any forms of mercy, is very similar to Javert.

As in "Les Miserables" the characters advocating cold justice are contrasted against other characters using mercy and forgiveness. But in "Ninety Three" Hugo adds an interesting twist. Whereas the Bishops kindness towards Jean Valjean in "Les Miserables" produces good results, in "Ninety Three" a beggar risks his life to shelter an aristocrat, only to regret it later when the aristocrat goes on to commit terrible atrocities.

And as with "Les Miserables", Hugo goes off on a few of his famous digressions at points. Fear not, however, they are not as long as the digressions in "Les Miserables" and, in my opinion, this time around they have more relation to the plot. But you just need to forgive him if in the middle of the story Hugo spends 10 pages talking about the Breton forests, or the French Revolutionary Convention.

For the history nerd, Hugo's portrayal of characters like Marat, Danton, and Robespierre are a real treat. When he gets into the sections on the Convention there is a lot of name dropping going on, and I didn't have a clue who most of the people were he was talking about were, but I was still able to appreciate the story.

Although this isn't one of Hugo's better known books, his perception and analysis as a writer are as brilliant as ever. This book is packed with brilliant observations and quotes. I actually wish I had written more of them down as I was reading, because so many of them seem like they would be perfect for framing on the doorway, or using in a paper. My favorite was when he was describing the various personalities of the French Revolution:

"Revolutions have two slopes, ascending and descending, and on these slopes they bear all seasons, from ice to flowers. Each segment of these slopes produces men adapted to its climate, from those who live in sunlight to those who live in lightning."

(As a history major, I think this perfectly describes the way a Revolution works.)

One final note: the edition I have contains an introduction from Ayn Rand who, it turns out, is a huge Victor Hugo fan, despite the latter's socialist leanings. She argues that Victor Hugo's books, in contrast to the Naturalist writers like Emile Zola, show man not as being controlled by his circumstances, but able to rise above them and realize true greatness.

It is an interesting perspective, although parts of "Ninety Three" do appear to directly contradict Rand's thesis at times:

"A Revolution is an act of the Unknown. Call it a good act or a bad act, according to whether you yearn for the future or the past, but leave it to him who did it. It seems to be the joint word of mingled great events and great individuals, but it is actually the resultant of events. Events spend, men pay. Events dictate, men sign....Desmoulins, Danton, Marat, Gregoire and Robespierre are only clerks. The enourmous and awesome author of those great pages has a name, God, and a mask, Destiny. Robespierre believed in God. Of course!"

I didn't quote the whole thing, but Hugo goes on in this way a little more. Looking at parts like this, one might think Hugo is in direct opposition to Ayn Rand. And yet when you look at the narrative as a whole, and the greatness that Hugo's characters aspire to, you just might think Ayn Rand has a bit of a point.

This is a great read, but certainly not one of Hugo's best. As this was one of the last books he wrote, he took full liberties with how the story unfolds, both in pandering to his fans and in following his whims. As his name was firmly established, he probably figured he could get away with all the outlandishness of Ninety-Three. Thus the storyline sounds too contrived. Hugo's grandess goes overboard, and most every situation is too all-or-nothing extreme. But please note that I have given this tome four stars. Where it does sound contrived, it is still a very entertaining read, and has most of the elements which makes Hugo so great- mysterious character and plot development, fusing disparate scenes into a cohesive equation, and bringing out the details of a bygone French world (here- the great Revolution). For the literary minded, first read Toilers of the Sea, then Les Miserables. For those who are new to grand historical fictions, this tome might be a good place to start; It is relatively short, steeped in drama and therefore an entertainment piece.

I second all the reviews here: Victor Hugo was great, his *Ninety-Three* a masterpiece. Lovers of literature, students of history alike will enjoy this grand epic of the year 1793, its warring ideals and the giants of men who embodied them. Hugo makes history come alive, and heroes are what drive it. Every one of the novel's characters, whether an imperious general or a half-mad-with-grief, rag-clad peasant mother searching desperately for her children, has a quality absent from much of today's literature: dignity. I have read few novels that bless the reader with as pure and exalted a vision of man's majesty as this one.