Okay so I slept on it, and I'm definitely still kinda mad about that.
I was reading Victor Hugo's The Man Who Laughs. Published in 1869, set in the late 1600s/early 1700s. The premise (as I don't think this one is particularly popular or well known, and hasn't had a popular adaptation in the U.S. since 1928) is that a child, who was disfigured by surgery to have a permanent grin on his face, is abandoned at the age of ten and through luck, grows up to become a very successful traveling performer on account of his extremely unique look. And then when he's 25 his past is found out and it turns out that he's the long lost heir of a lord, and drama ensues.
I enjoy the 1928 movie. I think because it's a silent film (although fun fact: It was the first to have sync sound--a parallel soundtrack baked into how the reel plays, including some early sound effects such as a bell ringing in time with its visual counterpart), it loses A Lot of the characters' nuance that I really appreciated getting to read. And there were a lot of extra things to the characters' relationships and interactions that simply got cut from the film. I have opinions on movie adaptions and what they keep vs. what they cut from a long text, and frankly, this is a fine version of the story. It doesn't challenge my opinions on how that should be done either for better or worse. It's just a pretty solid film and fairly faithful telling.
But this isn't about the film! This is about the book that I probably spent 40 hours slogging through. It was like panning for gold. I got a few really great lines and ideas and there were a couple things I really, deeply love about this book. Most of it was--I dunno, is there a term for the dirt/not-gold you wash away in gold panning? It was that. Probably what amounts to half the book was just Stuff I Do Not Care About in this year of 2026. I am not the 1869 French audience requiring 2 chapters of 1705 England worldbuilding to get one chapter of how that effects the characters. I can't imagine they cared much for it either, if I'm honest.
And I get it. Different time, different audience, different standards and expectations of writing and reading, different point to writing it. And because I get it, I put up with the slog. I trusted that if the text was that damn thorough, the ending would be too. Who spends Eighteen chapters on the nuanced doom of characters we don't care about and then doesn't pay off the ending of the ones we do? Unthinkable writing practice to me. But Victor Hugo will do that, apparently! And let's go do that same to four of our six major characters.
What about the other two? Oh, don't you know they're so in love (the children, who have been raised as siblings. The children who aren't really children but are 16 and 25? Who definitely still read as young and unaware of life? The star crossed lovers who--I cannot express this enough are six-fucking-teen and twenty-five, have never really known anyone else, and WERE RAISED AS SIBLINGS AND CALL EACH OTHER THAT? Who the narrative says were 'married in their innocence' at 1 and 10 years old??) that if one of them dies the other will too? Anyway being doomed by THAT narrative felt cheap and creepy as fuck. Supported by the text I guess, but that was definitely one of the things I was going "yikes! Hate that aspect of this!" the whole time I was reading.
And it was the only thing that was paid off. So the main characters are doomed--not by their choices or the events of the narrative, but by the heavy hand of the miserable author. Okay. Well what about the now-legitimate heir? What about the duchess? What about the villain that contrived the change in the status quo (suuuuper late in the book when that came to fruition btw)? What about the father? Oh you wanted to know about them? Too bad. It doesn't matter.
So anyway. Learned some lessons about character (good) and pacing (bad) and characters as symbols (good) and the promises you establish in the beginning of the book (bad), worldbuilding in an unfamiliar setting (mixed bag - liked how it was done, felt it was in fact too much and too often lost sight of the main point), and what it actually means to be doomed by the narrative (wtf. wtf????)
I don't think this is a result of a changed expectation as an audience. I have read other books from around that time and place that didn't do this. I haven't liked all of them but they have paid off the promises made in the beginning. I don't think expecting that (especially of an author of such renown as Victor Hugo) is unfair of me.
