Satisfying conclusions

Phew - grisly fate averted. I finished Dark Angels (new year, new rules - as I now know how to use italics on titles, I will do it from now on) a little more than a week back, and I'm happy to be able to recommend it without reservations to other villain-lovers. What actually happens to Henri Ange is unclear - that plot line is dropped, rather - but at least he doesn't end his days chained to the walls of a windowless cell.

My unwholesome crush on a poisoner - who prefers men, anyway, not that that is much of a bar fantasy-wise - has had at least one vaguely positive side effect. While watching The Borgias (only the three first episodes so far), I found myself not falling for Cesare Borgia's hired assassin. He would have been right up my alley otherwise; he's efficient, ferrety and gingerish. Right now, though, my standards when it comes to fictional assassins are quite high, and he falls short of them. That's something, surely?

Moving on from nasty characters to one of literature's most famous Mr Nices, I have now also, finally, finished reading Les Misérables, the story of the hardship-laden life of Jean Valjean. I find myself in two minds about whether I can keep recommending it now that I've read it all. There are scenes that are among the most powerful I've ever read, but the digressions do keep coming. Towards the end, Hugo tried my patience sorely by musing on the history and state of the sewers of Paris. Who cares? Valjean is down there, carrying Marius. How about focussing on getting them out? Perhaps the best recommendation I can come up with is to read an abridged version, or to buy the unabridged version and be ruthless enough to skip sections that do not advance the story.

I'm not sorry I've read it all, though, and at least now I have a clear idea about what actually happens in the story and which parts have been made up by various adaptations. For example, in the film with Liam Neeson and Geoffrey Rush, it is hinted that there is some romantic interest between Jean Valjean and Fantine. Not true, and Javert's kindly colleague doesn't exist in the book either. In the French TV series with Gérard Depardieu, Jean Valjean at one point tells Marius that he loves Cosette not as a father but as a man. Not so, mercifully. Hugo specifies that Jean Valjean's love for Cosette is especially intense as she replaces all the female figures he would normally have had in his life - mother, wife and daughter - but there is no erotic component in his love for her, at least no conscious one.

You do get another perspective on some of the book's themes if you trudge through it all. Every adaptation, including the musical, understandably focuses on the relationship between Jean Valjean, the ex-convict who broke parole, committed a minor offence and is therefore still a criminal in the law's eyes, and the duty-ridden policeman Javert. But when you read the novel, you realise that they are not so central to each other's lives as you might have thought. Of course, Javert wants to arrest Jean Valjean, just as he wants every criminal he encounters brought to justice, and of course Jean Valjean isn't keen on the idea. There is personal animosity between them, especially when Javert's unhelpful revelations about Valjean drives the sick and unhappy Fantine to her death. But most of the time, their encounters are pure chance, not part of a concentrated effort of Javert's to hunt Valjean down. He's got other fish to fry, and Valjean is too busy raising Fantine's child Cosette to nourish a hatred of Javert. This explains a great deal: I have always wondered a bit about why Javert should be obsessed with an ex-convict whose crimes are so laughably minor.

Also, I have in the past found Valjean's saving of Javert's life at the barricade a somewhat underhand act, a sort of vengeance through kindness. I was disposed to answer the question put by Javert in the musical - "And does he know/that granting me my life today/this man has killed me evenso" - with a resounding yes. In fact, saving Javert's life at that particular time isn't a big deal for Jean Valjean. He has resolved himself to yet another self-sacrifice: that of saving Marius, who will take Cosette away from him. This is the real wrench for him. Without Cosette, he doesn't really care about what happens to himself, and feels he might as well save as many lives as he can. In the end, it is not Valjean's kindness that derails Javert but his own reaction to it: later, he lets Jean Valjean go, and comes to realise that despite everything he has believed in all his life, this breach of the law for what looks like personal reasons might actually not be a bad thing.

It is a great novel, indisputably. But you can safely skip the parts about convents, sewers and impossibly goody-goody bishops.