Saturday, May 23, 2009
Kya- The Count of Monte Cristo
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas, pub. 1844, 1245 pg. , is at heart an adventure story. The basic plot, based loosely on a true story, is of an innocent sailor on the brink of personal and professional happiness, being betrayed by 3 acquaintances. He is falsely accused of conspiring to bring Bonaparte back to power, condemned to prison , and sent to an awful island dungeon where he remains for 14 years. Most of that time he is in solitary and thinks he will go mad. One day he realizes that the inmate next door is digging a tunnel towards him in an attempt to escape. Eventually the two meet and it turns out the other inmate #27 knows where a fabulous treasure is hidden and when he eventually dies in prison, bequeathes the treasure to our hero #34 otherwise known as Edmond Dantes. Dantes does escape from the dungeon a bitter man bent on revenge. He feels God has given him this vast fortune for the purposes of enacting punishment on those men who wronged him and the people he loved. The rest of the book is taken up with an incredibly complex tale of exactly how he does extract his revenge or God's justice. It's quite an amazing feat that Dumas could conjure up this story and keep the reader's interest for over 1200 pages. Other bloggers advised reading the unabridged and I have to agree. I think the translation I read was quite good because so much emotion and nuance still came through the language. Definitely, a worthwhile read although it took me much longer than I had anticipated.
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I read this one for the last challenge and liked it, although I thought it went on a bit too. By the end, I just felt like the guy had wasted most of his life trying to get revenge and he just needed to build a bridge and get over it.
You mentioned Bleak House when you dropped by my blog. Loved the book, but it was really annoying the way he went on about the law. He made his point about the process being long and drawn out rather well. Esther's bit were great though! She made the book.
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