Victor Hugo was a talented writer. That being said, he was French and it showed through in his work in the way of heaping grief upon strife upon turmoil upon tragedy, to the point that it is a wonder his characters made it as far as they did.
Drama he did well... Hugo stirred slowly and whipped up the action in the end to where I was gripping the sides of the book my eyes wide as I dared to read more, hoping and praying even that the sweet pure heroine would somehow make it through.
The crushing blow of Hugo’s reality however made that simply impossible. As a writer, I have to admit that it was his story to tell, his details to paint and his characters to do with that he wished, yet as an avid reader I resented the ending of the story to no end.
However the bright points made it worthwhile, for not only are we treated to a picturesque essay here and there on early Parisian life, the sentences are simply packed to overflowing with sights, smells, sounds and expressions...taunts and calls, whisperings, cries, songs and the brief moment of peace.
There are hidden magicians, over-zealous witch-hunts, tipsy playboys flagrantly spending others’ money, gypsies dancing and leaping by a roaring bonfire, shadows darting in the alleys snitching purses, soldiers riding gallantly through cobbled streets, their armor clanking...
Over this hubbub and alternating grime and finery sits Quasimodo, a grotesquely disfigured hunchback, whom was left as a babe by gypsies in place of the stolen child of a reformed lady of the night. A priest rescued the baby, a once dignified and somber man who cared for the ugly child as he did his own little brother.
Here Hugo makes his first diversion from plausible character into dramatic effect and drives the priest mad, not only by his apothecary superstitions(which were plausible for those times) but by the unexplained obsession-turned-hatred of the young gypsy girl, La Esmeralda. She dances for a living like a lithe sprite with tambourine and singing, using a pet goat to do all kinds of gymnastics tricks.
Superstition plays a large part in her downfall, but also a maddening lack of the art of begin forthcoming. She falls for the unworthy Phoebus, a playboy soldier of the worst order, and loves him ardently though later on he’ll watch calmly as she’d led to the gallows, to pay for the ironic crime of ’killing’ him, and does not intervene.
The scene is purely excellent, showing off with simple lines the modest shame of the girl in the executioner’s cart, the open vulgarity of the crowd, the corrupted priest who framed her, the officials who did not bother to find out if Phoebus was really dead and the brave, knightly spirit of the deformed bell-ringer, Quasimodo.
(continued in the comments below due to lack of space...)