The Catherine Howard Conspiracy by Alexandra Walsh

A new trilogy set in the mysterious Marquess House in Pembrokeshire, this is part narrated from the point of view of Perdita Rivers, a jewelry expert who inherits the house from her estranged grandmother, and partly from the point of view of Catherine Howard. Whilst I didn't always agree with the portrayal of the historical figures, for example Henry portrayed as a brutal wife beater, I appreciated that whenever the author could she used historical fact, which she explains in the footnote, and she has obviously done her research.   Walsh believes that Catherine was misrepresented by history and was not the airheaded flirt that she has been portrayed as, and I could see her reasoning and wanted to learn more. Of particular note was the idea that she had a cordial relationship with Anne of Cleaves whom she taught to dance. Some of the conspiracy elements seemed a little far-fetched at times, but it did add to the excitement of the novel and I both enjoyed reading it and wanted to read the next in the series. Perdita is an interesting character and I'm looking forward to finding out what is happening with Kit. The Catherine Howard parts were well written from a historical perspective and from the character perspective. You really feel for her as she is forced to marry the repugnant Henry to assist her power grabbing family and it's evident that whether or not he was a wife beater, he did suffer from memory issues. This is available on Kindle Unlimited and I would recommend it for readers who enjoy conspiracy theories, alternative history and historical fiction/contemporary fiction.

The Murder of The Romanovs by Andrew Cook

A history book that uses recently released sources to lay conspiracy theories about the survival of the Romanov family to rest. This is obviously well researched with a full bibliography of sources at the back, and is filled with a surprising number of illustrations for a short book. Cook goes into a great deal of detail about the last few months of the family.

However, I did have reservations about the book. Whilst there is a bibliography of sources divided into themes, I found it strange that there were no proper footnotes or endnotes. Whilst I don't always read all the footnotes, I suppose I find it reassuring to know exactly where the historian has found their information and to tell what angle they are taking with it. Also, I thought this lacked analysis. Most of the book was taken up with the description of what had happened, a small chapter at the end described what was in the newly released documents, then the rest was taken up with the original sources. I felt like I might as well just read the sources direct. The lack of analysis made the history somewhat dry and overall I found this quite an odd book.

The Five by Hallie Rubenhold

Reclaiming the Victims of Jack The Ripper

The Grave of the final victim

https://castbox.fm/vb/133741532 The Guardian podcast on Why we have forgotten Jack the Ripper’s Victims.

This book is a very timely exploration of the way that we view victims of these terrible crimes. In it, Hallie uses a quotation from 2008 for the trial of the Suffolk Strangler where the judge told the jury to disregard the lifestyles of the women he murdered as he felt that the jury may be influenced by their jobs as sex workers. This is a great point as we are still in a society where victims of crime such a rape are judged for their appearances.

She explores the lives of these women in a very accessible way, showing that although  it is widely believed (and indeed almost romanticised as such) that they were not all prostitutes and that we are doing them a disservice to believe the myths and focus on the murderer. Victorian society made it impossible for a woman to survive without men and any perceived transgression led to a woman being branded as ‘fallen’. All of these women had in one way or another suffered ill luck through their circumstances and suffered complete degradation as a result. This is a story of workhouses, doss houses, tramping the street, being cast out by your family and just trying desperately to survive. Alcohol was a major factor in two of the stories, the women were addicted to it as it was cheaper than food, numbed the pain and made them feel warm.

Rubenhold is a brilliant storyteller who brings the women to life so that you almost feel like you know them. She has also obviously done a great deal of difficult research, having to disregard biased and incomplete evidence.

I have been fascinated by the debate on twitter that she has begun about the way that Jack the Ripper is taught in schools as a way to draw teenagers into the history of Victorian slums and the business of the museums and tours where people seem to revel in the murders. It’s shocking some of the brutal and gory teaching materials she has found (work out the price of a prostitute, draw the dead victim etc.). She does not include anything about the murderer and not much about the murders, just where they took place and what the victims were carrying at the time. If you are looking for a book where the author provides any speculation about who the Ripper was or what happened when he murdered the victims this is not it, what it is is a meticulously researched biography of women who are traditionally overlooked.

Read Harder Challenge

Checking my reading list lately it occurs to me how many books I read that are by European white men, especially of the dead variety. Although I own lots of books by women and people of different races, I think I've got a bit stuck in a rut of reading books from the same perspective and in particular nineteenth century classics and books set in that time period.

So this month I have decided to try and challenge myself to try and broaden my horizons. I am not going to ban myself from reading books I've already started, but I'm hoping that all the books I start will be by alternative authors.

So far I have continued the French theme I have been pursuing by reading The Lost King of France, a history book describing the downfall of the French royal family and attempts to trace Louis XVII through DNA testing. Although I enjoy reading history books I don't often read books with forensic analysis. This was very interesting and obviously well researched. Deborah Cadbury's description of the treatment of the Dauphin was heartbreaking but avoided becoming too melodramatic. 

Tigers in Red Weather, on the other hand, was wonderfully melodramatic. Full of lurid family secrets and deeply flawed characters. I liked how the story is teased out through the shift in narrative viewpoints so that the reader is not actually sure about the heart of the mystery until the end.

Finally, I finished A Little Life, something that had been on my reading list for a while. Not an easy book to get into due to the subject matter and it seemed like most readers either loved it or hated it. I was in the minority of appreciating it. I thought that the writing was really good, I could appreciate the uplifting moments (I cannot understand people giving books low ratings for being depressing, especially books that are about child abuse) and I was moved and horrified by the story but I also recognised the criticisms, that perhaps Yanagihara missed out on portraying homosexuals and homosexual relationships in a positive way and that the abuse depicted is so very extensive and revealed throughout the book in such a way that it starts to read a little like a hurt/comfort fan fic where the poor protagonist is heaped with such a litany of horrifying things happening to them that it kind of numbs the reader. Once I got into it, I raced through it but the second half got a little frustrating with Jude continually apologising and refusing to see a psychiatrist or do much else to help himself. Anyway, it got 4 stars and I didn't write a review on Goodreads. 

As a follow up I have started The Goldfinch. I haven't had a great history with Donna Tartt, I hated The Secret History to the point of blocking it from my mind and I can't even remember if I actually finished it. But so far I have been impressed with the writing and the plot. 

I am also considering continuing with the French theme by reading a book that's been on the old 'to read' list for a long time, A Place of Greater Safety. I've started it a few times but somehow never got into it. 

Otherwise, I am not sure where the read harder challenge will take me, although I think I'd like to read a little bit more history and also Villa America.   

Shopping, Seduction and Mr. Selfridge by Lindy Woodhead

I am a complete sucker for books of T.V. programs, whether they are fictional adaptations, written especially for the series or history books. So, I was delighted to find this cheap on the old Kindle. I was not that horrified to find out the amount of liberties I.T.V has taken with historical fact, after a while you get used to it and I understand that taking Downton With Shops as truth is liable to make you look rather silly. No, it’s written as entertainment and it provides that much. 

The book too, is entertaining and quite well written. You can see that it is not supposed to be ‘serious’ history in that it doesn’t really contain a great deal of analysis, but that is hardly a flaw when it has so many interesting facts and anecdotes that give you a sense of the family and the business. I loved the number of personalities that filled the pages, and sometimes it is wonderfully relaxing to be entertained by tales of rich people doing extravagant things and descriptions of crazy by-gone fashions.  The book was well researched and some of the anecdotes were quite personal. 

It did slightly nark me at times that she didn’t put references in the main body of the text, I think there is no excuse for not doing that with an ereader as it’s so easy to be able to flick back and forth between the references and the main body of the text. Also, the images and illustrations were at the end in a separate section, so I did think that they were missing until I finished the book and went ‘ah, so that’s what they looked like.’ But these were minor formatting points rather than big criticisms. 

Overall, I’m glad to have read it as it has given me a better insight into the background of the period and to a man who was such an interesting character, although in a way I am also quite sad to know how the story ends and hope that there is a happier ending for I.T.V’s Mr. Selfridge. 

What the world needs now, is hats, sweet hats

 I also enjoyed reading a little bit of history and have vowed to vary the all fiction all the time diet with some more of the historical stuff, as I know that I own a great pile of history books I haven't read either!

The June Rebellion

Meanwhile, Cos and Valjean prepare to head to England where they can hide away from his past and the dreaded Revolution, which is undoubtedly doing nothing for anyone who is relatively prosperous or ‘Bourgeois’.  Not that Hugo has described any of this from the point of view of say the owner of the Corinth tavern, who has had his or her property invaded and destroyed by a bunch of over-enthusiastic student protestors, street urchins, an imprisoned police officer and a few dead bodies. Nor has Valjean in fact noticed that there is a revolution going on around him, he’s too busy mooning over Cos (in a fatherly way of course). 

But, horror of horrors! He examines her blotter and discovers the message she wrote telling Marius where she’s going. He completely over-reacts and suffers some sort of ‘spiritual collapse’ (p975). Having had nothing or no-one to love in his entire life, he has become completely fixated on her and cannot comprehend sharing her with anyone. He develops a sort of a hatred for Marius (albeit the sort of hatred that entails him heading to the barricade to save Marius’s life). He goes out and encounters Gavroche, who is smashing street lamps, and there is a lovely little scene between him and Valjean where the old man tries to give him a five franc piece out of charity, but Gavroche doesn’t want to accept it as he fears that Valjean is trying to bribe him to stop smashing the lamps. Five francs is an enormous sum to the urchin and he spends some time admiring it as some sort of museum piece until Valjean gets him to take it. Gavroche  gives him Marius’s letter then rushes back to the barricade, feeling slightly guilty he’s given the letter to a random rather than the person he was supposed to give it to. 

They both head to the barricade, Valjean dressed in his National Guarde uniform. The old man is triumphant Marius is about to die, then gloomy again (I think he knows in his heart nothing is ever going to be the same as far as he’s concerned and probably deep down realises that he’s being horrible to Marius, even though Marius is hardly a worthy suitor).

On the way back Gavroche ‘borrows’ a hand-card and causes chaos after he smashes it into a sergeant in the course of escaping. Hugo thus amusingly explains the legend of ‘Night attack on the post of Imprimerie Royale.’

Part five opens with another lecture on the revolution and on the barricades. Marius and the rest of the revolutionaries rebuild the barricades and there is a sense of relief, a kind of barracks humour before the main ‘battle’. Again, Hugo anchors the narrative in history, this time with Feiully carving “Long live the people!” on the beam in the tavern, which is apparently still there in 1848. The narrator compares the barricade to ‘a ship in distress’ (p995). Enjorlas realises that they are significantly outnumbered, having been abandoned by most of their supporters, and that they will probably all die. He argues that the men with families who will be missed should withdraw from the battle (as if they don’t look after their women, their women will be unable to support themselves and will be forced to turn to prostitution and their babies will end up on the streets), and five men are forcibly ‘volunteered’ to withdraw. He urges them not to be ‘egoists’, although Hugo points out that he is one himself.

  

Hugo returns to his maritime metaphors describing Marius’s feelings: ‘the depths of despair’, ‘his own personal shipwreck’ and ‘deeply sunk’ (p1000).

However, there are only four uniforms (of National Guarde) that will enable the non-egoists to escape. Luckily, Val turns up at exactly the right time and flings his own uniform onto the table in a suitably dramatic way. He is about to be thrown out or certainly challenged when Marius vouches for him. Enjorlas makes a grand,l stirring speech which I can’t really be bothered to analyse, I think there has been so much preaching in the book so far more preaching starts to pass you by after a while. He speaks to Javert who is still stoic in the face of death, but asks if he can be tied to a table instead of a post, which Enjorlas agrees to.

The army begins firing cannons at the barricade and Gavroche comes back from his errand, much to Marius’s horror. Although Valjean knows very little about what is going on as far as the revolution is concerned, he still volunteers to defend them, risking his life but in a way that does as little harm to the other side as possible. The revolutionaries get all weepy about killing a dashing young sergeant, I think this must be Hugo’s way of showing that they still have feelings and want to be merciful, even though they are in desperate peril. It comes across as being rather odd, like they only want to spare attractive people because of their attractiveness. 

Meanwhile, Cos is getting up in her girlish bedroom, unaware of the danger Marius is in. In some luridly prudish prose Hugo skirts around the issue of her dishabille, complete with symbolic buds and opening flowers, along with bosoms, shoulders, undergarments and ‘shivers of cold and modesty’ (p1017). It is quite an odd, voyeuristic passage showing how Hugo is evidently the kind of man who likes to put young, chaste girls on the very highest of pedestals. I do tend to find Cossette quite a disappointing character; I suppose I’d like her to show some of the strength she should have developed in growing up and perhaps have some sort of fight with Eponine over Marius. Instead, she is a worthy partner for Marius in her insipidness. She never really gets the chance to develop as anything other than an irritating clotheshorse who exists mainly as the subject of Marius and Valjean’s emotions, she is what they make her. 

Back to the barricade and some more defenders have been shot and killed. They are also running out of ammo, so Gavroche goes to get some more from the fallen attackers. He goes out bravely, singing as he has done throughout the book and in the process is shot and killed. 

The narrative swiftly moves to his brothers, who have sneaked into the Luxembourg Gardens since the rich people have turned their backs for a moment. They are becoming true street urchins and are starving hungry. A man is walking there with his son who is obviously well-fed and toying with a bun that he is not really hungry for. The father advises him to throw it for the swan, they leave and a fight nearly breaks out between the swan and the older Thenard brother who goes after it, sharing it with his brother. Although he does give the larger piece to his brother, evidently affected by the rough kindness Gavroche showed them. 

At the barricade Valjean offers to blow Javert’s brains out, but just as he is about to do it Enjorlas and gang go back outside to join the fighting. Valjean frees Javert, giving him his address and covering up the fact that he is still alive (only Marius knows). We don’t know what Valjean is thinking at this point, in fact Hugo doesn’t describe his emotions from the time he left home to head towards the barricade. There is another essay, then back to the battle. The tavern is ruined and most of ABC have been killed ‘off stage’, as heroically as possible. Only Marius and Enjorlas are left, and Marius has already been wounded. Marius is then more seriously injured and disappears, apparently arrested. The remains of ABC run out of bullets and use anything as weapons. Enjorlas is captured, he and Grantaire (who has just woken up) are shot and killed (they really should’ve left the handsome sergeant alone, apparently the army were using him as some sort of handsome mascot and are pretty pissed he got shot).  We discover that Valjean has ‘captured’ Marius and taken him away.

So, there is the June Rebellion and the end of the ABC Society, along with half of the Thenardier family (having finished the book now I know that the two boys are not in the rest of it, they’ve disappeared). After all that preaching about it, it is somewhat surprising that it ends so abruptly, but then it only lasted a total of two days. Hugo is fine at building tension and excitement (although he did really need to cut down on the windbagging and speechifying), but was not that fantastic at death scenes, at least not in this book. I wonder if it is lost in translation or if it really does just end up mostly a list of people getting shot with barely an emotion in sight? 

Anyway, this seemed to be a good place to stop as next we have a riveting essay on sewerage on sewers before we find out what Valjean is going to do with Marius.  

Historical Authenticity in Les Mis

It seems a good time to turn my attention to how Hugo conveys a sense of historical authenticity in Les Miserables. Hugo skilfully weaves the lives of his characters around historical events and uses a number of techniques to convey historical authenticity.

Locations are an extremely important part of the book, particularly as many of the locations had subsequently disappeared by the time Hugo was writing. The Bastille Elephant acting as a home for Gavroche and his brothers is a vivid example of the way that location is used. It works to ‘anchor’ the narrative by referencing a real place that would have been instantly recognisable, and also on a symbolic level representing the defeat of Napoleon and the poverty of the city.  

Image taken from Wikipedia

Hugo links events in the lives of the characters around historical dates, for example, the presence of Pontmercy and Thenardier at Waterloo. The narrative steadily progresses up to the events of the Revolution itself. Both the Revolution and the Battle of Waterloo are dealt with in retrospective essays where Hugo deals with the consequences and his theory that there was a kind of destiny to both events. Although it doesn’t seem to make sense that he has gone so far back when first reading the book, the Battle of Waterloo and the defeat of Napoleon are relevant to the events in that they have lead to the amount of poverty and lack of justice there is for the ‘Miserables’ of the story and for the Revolution itself. 

Book 11 begins with Gavroche, who acts as a powerful symbol within the book as he is probably one of the most wretched characters in his youth and homelessness. Yet he never succumbs to being made helpless and despite his poverty and the way that he has been brought up (by the despicable Thernadiers), he is also shown to be a moral character - although he will engage in dubious activities to feed himself he will generously give a purse of money to Mabeuf and take care of two homeless lost boys (without realising that they are his own brothers). Here, he enthusiastically arms himself ready for the Revolution (albeit with a broken cavalry pistol he has ‘borrowed’). He lost his two brothers twelve weeks ago having sent them out one day when he was occupied elsewhere. He is concerned about them, but not over-worried. He joins with the ABC Society, along with Mabeuf, who is a bit confused but supportive of the Revolution. More people join and Courfeyrac encounters Eponine, who has disguised herself as a boy and is trying to find Marius. They all head towards the barricade. 

In Book 12 Hugo describes the Rue de la Chanvrerie barricade using the same style as he has described the events of 5^th June 1832 and the Battle of Waterloo. The book is entitled ‘Corinth’ and the first chapter is entitles ‘The History of Corinth from its Foundation’. This is a pun on the fact that far from being about the Classical Greek world, this is about a tavern which Hugo has cleverly chosen to set the site for both his narrative and for a new barricade. It is clever as this is a real location, both the street and the tavern itself, but has subsequently disappeared in 1847 (by the time the book is published in 1862). The tavern is used as a location for a meeting place for the ABC Society. 

Two members of the Society are at the tavern already. Laigle de Meux and Joly dine there with Grantaire who makes a speech about God’ role in the Revolution, that there is somehow little sense in man’s affairs, which makes revolutions necessary. They also discuss Marius’s love life. Gavroche gives them a message from Enjorlas telling them to join him and the ABC Society at the barricade, but they decide to stay in the tavern drinking instead. Hugo sets the scene: ‘The room was dark, with dense clouds smothering the daylight. There was no one in the tavern or in the street, everyone having gone off to witness the happenings.’ (p925). 

 

The ABC Society turns up brandishing weapons and decides to build a barricade near the tavern with bits of the tavern. Hugo adds authenticity here by talking of newspaper accounts: ‘The newspapers of the day, which reported the “almost unassailable” barricade in the Rue de la Chanvrerie reached the level of the second storey, were in error.’ (p933). There is also an air of nobility and romance created by Hugo reporting that ‘these gallant young me, brothers in this supreme moment in their lives’ (p935) recited love poems while they were waiting. It is evident that Hugo agrees with the aims of the Revolution by the way he depicts it, as well as the imagery of the fairy light on the small barricade and the torch on the larger one, a symbol of hope of fifty men waiting for sixty thousand. 

In the meantime, Gavroche recognises Javert and the revolutionaries tie him up. In his certainty that he is in the right he has no fear that he will be shot afterwards, despite the threat from Enjorlas. Hugo builds tension by talking of a ‘tragic picture’ and ‘epic and savage horror’ at the beginning of the next chapter (p939). It relates how Le Cabuc joins the revolutionaries in the tavern, an unrecognised apparent drunkard who wants to shoot from a house at the Rue Saint-Denis, but is refused entry and shoots one of the occupants. Enjorlas steps in a shoots Le Cabuc, making a speech that as revolutionaries they must be above moral suspicion. Again, to add authenticity, Hugo talks of a police report of 1832 that he has seen in 1848 that reveals that ‘Le Cabuc’ was a police informer called Clasquesous: ‘His life had been lived in shadow, his end was total darkness.’ (p942). The chapter ends with Eponine joining them.  

In conclusion, I think that in writing Les Miserables Hugo aimed not for complete historical accuracy, but to give an overall sense of the period and to make the reader connect to the events depicted. Sometimes this is by invoking an emotional response in the way he depicts characters such as Fantine, Valjean and Gavroche but sometimes it is by using real events, locations and fictional newspaper reports to make the reader feel that what he is writing is authentic.

Part 4, Books 1-10. The Lovers Meet and There is a Riot

Part 4 opens with another of Hugo’s historic discourses, in this case the history of 1831-1832 and the end of the Bourbon Restoration, another sweeping retrospective resembling his description of the Battle of Waterloo. Again, fate is a major part of it, ‘Revolutions are not born of chance but of necessity…It happens because it had to happen.’ (p721). Louis-Philippe of Orleans is made King (in real life Hugo gets made a peer by him in 1841). It’s evidently a time of intrigue what with the secretive revolutionary societies sending out coded messages, people spying on each other, rumours and gossip, secret documents, people amassing weapons and the ABC planning for future events.

Meanwhile, Marius moves in with Courfeyrac, fearing that he will be forced to testify against Thenard, breaking his promise to his father. He anonymously sends money he can’t afford to the family, getting into debt with his friends. He’s heartbroken, confused and unemployed. In fact, he spends most of the subsequent books being generally wet and pathetic. Javert is still looking for some of the criminals after his triumph at Maison Thenardier. The criminals, in particular Brujon are busy planning something which Hugo doesn’t let us know that much about. Eponine is released. Mabeuf encounters her in his garden where she asks where Marius lives. She’s improved in beauty but is still pretty ragged and shabby.

Book 3 returns to a period before Marius fell in love with Cosette, to Valjean and Cos’s new homeand in particular how Valjean feels about her. Although they were both happy at the convent, Val fears that he will lose her if she takes the veil, so moves them both before this can happen. He is still jealous of anything and anyone that he fears will take her away from him, even though this is before she grows into her great beauty. His fears grow as she grows more beautiful and becomes a consummate clothes horse, and despite her hiding her love for Marius, Val is pretty suspicious of him. In the meantime, the former prisoner is invited to join the National Guard and he continues to remain alert against his potential discovery by the police. Following a lovely walk with Cosette, the pair of them witness a chain gang on the way to the galleys. Valjean is disturbed, but doesn’t confess to Cos despite her questions as to what it meant.

Book 4 focuses on Mabeuf and what happened to Gavroche after the incident at Maison Thenard. Gavroche witnesses Valjean saving Mabeuf from being attacked by a criminal called Montparnasse. Gavroche is impressed because it’s obvious that Valjean is much older than the criminal, and he passionately lectures him that his preference for the idle life of stealing from the defenceless rather than finding a job will subsequently lead to the much harder work of being on the treadmill; becoming works’ ‘Negro slave’ (p793). ‘Work is the law of life, and to reject it as boredom is to submit to it as torment.’ (ibid). Valjean describes working men with an almost holy reverence, whereas idleness is compared with hell. Even if the criminal is not caught, his life will still be insufferably difficult. Even just choosing to be idle is wrong and an offense to society: ‘To live in idleness on the body politic is to be useless, that is to say harmful, and it can only end in misery. Woe to those who choose to be parasites, they become vermin!’ (p795). Valjean ends up by giving him his purse, which the criminal has no compunction in accepting, having dismissed his speech. Gavroche sees his chance and pickpockets the thief whilst Montparnasse is mulling over what Valjean has said, however, far from keeping the purse for himself as his despicable parents would have done, he anonymously gives it to Mabeuf who believes that it has fallen from heaven. Gavroche is like some sort of junior Valjean, but more criminal and wily.

Having not seen Marius for a while, Cos develops a brief crush on Theodule. Valjean goes on a brief visit somewhere he doesn’t reveal to Cosette and while he is away she becomes convinced that there is an intruder. When he comes back they decide that it is a chimney stack. She also finds a mysterious stone with a notebook underneath, containing Marius’s obsessive ramblings about her. Rather than freaking out that he’s some sort of creepy stalker she decides that she doesn’t fancy Theodule that much after all, she is totally, utterly and completely in love with Marius. She meets him in the garden and is literally overcome with emotion. Throughout the episode Hugo emphasises the purity and innocence of their love, Cos knows little of love and romance having grown up in the convent and Marius has never had any experience with any other women either, however, the description does end up rather sentimental and sweet. Marius so far has to be the most irritating character in the book, he started out well with his fervent political beliefs and his determination to make it on his own, but quickly degenerated into a big weepy lovesick puppy when he first saw Cos. The description of love is definitely very characteristic of novels of this period where sentimentality can reign supreme and purity is valued above all else, particularly in the case of the women. Yet hopefully both characters will be saved by the strength developed through hardship that they have both endured.

Luckily, Book 6 moves away from the lovers back to the underworld where two of the Thenard children have been hired out to Magnon (the mother of Gillenormand’s illegitimate children) to make money from the old man after Magnon’s two children were carried off by a croup epidemic. Madame Thenard has limited resources of motherly love which is reserved for her two daughters rather than her three sons. As the boys are worth 80 francs each they are well cared for right up until the day that Magnon and her associate are both arrested and the two boys get lost. Luckily for them, Gavroche finds them (although he seems to have no awareness that they are his brothers, it’s just that Gavroche is an instinctively moral character when it comes to dealing with people who are suffering). He buys them bread and it is not just black (or prison) bread and takes them to his ‘home’. On the way he meets Montparnasse who recounts his meeting with Valjean. Gavroche is living in a large elephant statue situated outside the Bastille, which he has furnished with items he has stolen from the zoo. It’s dark, they have to sleep inside a net to prevent the rats from bothering them, but it makes a home for the resourceful Gavorche and his brothers. The items he has stolen from the zoo, for example, his bed and blanket, are all of good quality. It is as if Paris cares more about the animals or about the spectacle of the elephant statue than it cares about its poor, its homeless and its children. Gavroche takes care of the two boys in a paternal way. They are about to go to sleep when he is summoned by Montparnasse – the criminals who are involved with his parents are attempting an escape. Thenard is almost abandoned by the criminals in the process of escaping, but he lets them know that he is there and they get Gavroche to help them to rescue him. Thenard doesn’t recognise his own son, the criminals point him out.

After another one of Hugo’s digressions, this time about the criminal argot, we move on to book 8 and back to the lovers meeting. Marius puts Cos on a pedestal: ‘…physical desire is wholly subdued beneath the omnipotence of spiritual ecstasy,’ (p845). It is very over-the-top, sentimental and romanticised. Poor Eponine is sadly neglected by Marius. Cosette is better at hiding things and so Valjean doesn’t notice. The revolution is looming, Hugo has got up to 3^rd June 1832. The criminals lurk outside Val and Cos’s house, but are warned off by Eponine, who is scared of nothing and nobody, not even her horrible father, “You poor fools, you think you can frighten any woman because you’ve got soft little sluts of mistresses who cower under the bedclothes when you talk rough. But I’m not scared.” (p857).  Valjean is getting ready to leave for England in his constant hunt for security, Cos warns Marius who doesn’t take it well, but unfortunately he can’t join them as he’s been mooning so much he has no money. He seems to see Cos as some sort of possession, I suppose he has this in common with Valjean – neither man feels that they can share the girl with anybody else. He is horrified by the prospect of her leaving, although she doesn’t seem to be that bothered by it, she just invited him along. They make plans to meet a few days later and he goes to Gillenormand to plead for pity. His grandfather is 91 and had been hoping that Marius would relent and visit him, however, he’s left it a bit too late and the old man isn’t that inclined to give his blessing to the couple’s marriage (Marius has to be over 25 to marry without his guardian’s blessing), particularly as neither has any money. He advises Marius to enjoy her without marrying her, Marius storms off and the old man promptly drops dead trying to get him to come back.

Meanwhile, Valjean has been noticing that Thenard is hanging around and he is prompted by that and a mysterious message to leave. Marius sulks, Cos disappears. Somebody who sounds like Eponine directs him to the barricade, where his friends have gone.  Mabeuf hears that there is a riot.

Book 10 is set on 5^th June 1832, the day that the riot begins. Hugo opens with a mini essay about the impact of revolt. The riot begins when General Lamarque’s funeral procession is disrupted by a man with a red flag and Lamarque’s body and Lafayette are carried off by the rioters. The populace begin to arm themselves and some of the Garde Nationale are killed. The Government and the King fail to react promptly and the police start arresting great numbers of people that they have searched. Paris is in chaos and twenty seven barricades are erected.

Anyway, this seemed like a good place to stop and take stock of what had happened in part 4 so far, although I don’t think that I will be reading quite such a big chunk of the book without writing about it as I go again! I have to say, I am surprised that it's taken Hugo this long to get to the barricades, this has been a ridiculous amount of build up. I'm hoping the riot/revolution/whatever we want to call it will spur Marius onto some sort of greatness rather than being the whiny little sausage he's currently being and that we see more of Gavroche.