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It’s odd to read a story that’s so familiar and yet so utterly different from what we’ve grown up with. The Disney versions, the plays, the pop culture references only really got a gist of what this novel truly is; a masterpiece.

Of course Hugo can be a pain to read (and that’s putting it mildly). He loses himself in architecture, in history, in the streets of his beloved Paris and he doesn’t always succeed in inviting the reader to travel beside him. But even when he’s at his most flighty, there’s a powerful poetry to his words and metaphors.

At its heart, this book is a tribute to the Notre Dame; to the bustling streets of Paris; to the sinners and the saints; and to the distorted ideal of justice that still exist today.

While perhaps not as strong or in-depth as Les Miserables, this is a masterpiece in its own right. It’s a complex and slow story which perhaps explains its many simplified adaptations. It’s a hard novel to condense � and that is part of its attraction.