Here to help celebrate the great Romantic writer's bicentennial
year is a lively new translation of the least known of his massive,
unruly masterpieces. Though it lacks the concentrated melodramatic
power of Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, this
agreeably preposterous romance, originally published in 1866 in a
carefully edited and partially censored text, displays most of
Hugo's enduring crowd-pleasing skills: a mastery of atmosphere
(especially in the essay-like opening sequence, "The Channel
Archipelago"), deep and credible empathy with working-class heroes
and heroines, and a rare ability to create vivid and visceral
action scenes (most notably evident in its hero's climactic battle
with the loathsome octopus known as the "pieuvre," or devilfish).
The central story, in which its protagonist Gilliatt accepts the
task of freeing a grounded ship (for which service he will be
awarded the hand of a wealthy shipowner's daughter), is
energetically juxtaposed against richly detailed pictures of
seamen's occupations and marine life that recall (though in no way
rival) Melville's definitive mixture of narrative and fact in
Moby-Dick. And, although Toilers is unmistakably more romance than
realistic novel, the bracing bitterness of its ironic conclusion
gives it a haunting staying power. Those of us who first "read"
this novel in the Classic Comics version of half a century ago will
be grateful to discover that Hugo's impossibly grandiose and
overblown yarn remains as perversely irresistible as ever. (Kirkus
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