Kelson Reads a publié une critique de Toilers of the Sea par Victor Hugo
Man vs. Shipwreck
4 étoiles
It's a little weird to start your book dedicated to the small community that took you in when you were exiled with several chapters about how superstitious and distrustful of outsiders the people here are. But this is Victor Hugo, and he doesn't take the easy way out. (He does insist that he's talking only about the Guernesey of several decades before his time, not his neighbors.)
It's an interesting read, though, and a tighter structure than Les Misérables (unless the 1877 translation I read is seriously abridged, which it doesn't indicate). The first half of the book builds up to a storm at sea and a shipwreck, and the rest is mostly one really determined man's attempt to salvage the steamship's engine, alone, out on the rocks in the middle of the channel. It takes him months, using only a handful of tools he brought and what parts …
It's a little weird to start your book dedicated to the small community that took you in when you were exiled with several chapters about how superstitious and distrustful of outsiders the people here are. But this is Victor Hugo, and he doesn't take the easy way out. (He does insist that he's talking only about the Guernesey of several decades before his time, not his neighbors.)
It's an interesting read, though, and a tighter structure than Les Misérables (unless the 1877 translation I read is seriously abridged, which it doesn't indicate). The first half of the book builds up to a storm at sea and a shipwreck, and the rest is mostly one really determined man's attempt to salvage the steamship's engine, alone, out on the rocks in the middle of the channel. It takes him months, using only a handful of tools he brought and what parts he could salvage from the wreck, even building a makeshift forge in a hollow in the rocks.
Other characters include the steamship owner and his daughter, a former partner who ran off with half the money, and the captain who replaced him (and ultimately wrecks the ship). The build-up to the wreck is a bit of a slog until you start putting together the pieces that are deliberately left unsaid or appear contradictory, so that by the time the wreck happens you have a pretty good idea of why it happens.
It's mostly man vs. nature, but this being Hugo, there's social commentary too. Trusting or distrusting people for the wrong reasons, religious intolerance and superstitions, the hazards of overconfidence, misplaced righteousness, paying attention to what's actually going on rather than what you expect to be going on, and so forth.