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Vibrant scenes, full of irony but also one of the most trope filled books I’ve read. The Hunchback of the Notre Dame is much more like a Disney movie than I expected: predictable, fun and with solid production value a.k.a. writing by Hugo.

Setting
No better way to keep somebody waiting patiently than to swear to them that you will start immediately
This tale, with an almost execution in book two and some miraculous saves and a beauty with an animal companion (Djali the spelling, golden horned and hoofed mini goat) feels so filmic and Disney that it is almost uncanny. That the titular character only appears around page 60 is different than a modern day filmmaker would have it, but for the rest The Hunchback of Notre-Dame feels as formulaic and fun as a Marvel movie. Everyone knows each other, is related to each other, doesn’t know their own identity and dies at the exact same moment, it’s a soap opera like in that sense.

Hugo’s love for medieval Paris and grievances with changes after the gothic era is the longest chapter and clearly shines throughout the novel. Victor Hugo does likes driving the point home in respect to his views on the past, in chapter two we already have two “and then��, “and then��, “and then�� paragraphs about some setting in the past. The slightly satiric voiceover from the 19th century providing comments on the tale in the 15th century is interesting and make the book feel quite modern, a bit Jonathan Safran Foer like, a surprisingly easy read.
The supposition, with belief in alchemy, people locked in cells for prayer till they die and witch trials, make the world of Quasimodo still feel very different to Hugo’s or our own times. Also there is a lot of Latin, of which I wonder if it is not an anachronistic device if Hugo. Was French at that time not already a lingua franca?

Ayway, the injustice and haphazard nature of authority (that comes back more prominent in Les Miserables), is exemplified here with a deaf judge, and stands in stark contrast to the love Hugo shows to the gothic scenery of Paris in the 15th century.
King Louis XI makes a chapter long cameo and perfectly captures the villains in the story: absent minded, vain, fickle and deviously fun to read about, as are the vagabonds in the Coeur des Miracles who are almost slapstick like villains.
Overall Hugo’s attitude to medieval Paris reminds me of Midnight in Paris by Woody Allen where everyone wants to go back to a historic golden age Paris that they’ve just missed.

Characters
Nothing makes more adventurous than a completely empty purse
The characters are filmic as well.
Frollo gets a whole Bruce Wayne backstory in 5 pages and turns out to be the most #metoo character ever, blaming his fall from sanity and into kidnap, murder and worse fully on Esmeralda’s looks.
We have Gringoire, pedantic but pragmatic, with a lot of words, who seems a little bit too much into Djali the mini goat for comfort.
Esmeralda, in the end just being plain stupid for falling for captain Phoebus rather than just showing naïveté in my humble opinion.
And of course Quasimodo, evil because he is wild, wild because he is ugly, is depicted in an almost Frankenstein like way.

Also the way in how events are foreshadowed but the characters don’t seem able to do anything to change their fate (Anankè incidentally being the Greek word for fate that starts of the novel) feels distinctly gothic novel like. However compared to Frankenstein and Wuthering Heights I liked this work of Hugo a lot more because of the humour he incorporates as omniscient narrator, breaking the fourth wall and showing the hypocrisy of his characters. The keen eye of Hugo for the faults and limitations of his characters, for instance vain Phoebus, good for nothing, always student Jehan and naieve Esmeralda, reminds me of Leo Tolstoy.

There are some aspects of the storytelling that struck me as a bit sloppy, like how did Frollo buy something, and give a coin to Phoebus, when his brother took his purse with him? And due to the slapstick nature of some characters I could not really say I engaged emotionally with the "tragic" outcome.

But overall this is a surprisingly fun classic, despite it being predictable for a modern day reader.