Here to help celebrate the great Romantic writers bicentennial year is alively new translation of the least known of his massive unruly masterpieces.Though it l... » 

Here to help celebrate the great Romantic writers bicentennial year is alively new translation of the least known of his massive unruly masterpieces.Though it lacks the concentrated melodramatic power of Les Miserables and TheHunchback of Notre Dame this agreeably preposterous romance originallypublished in 1866 in a carefully edited and partially censored text displaysmost of Hugos enduring crowdpleasing skills a mastery of atmosphereespecially in the essaylike opening sequence The Channel Archipelagodeep and credible empathy with workingclass heroes and heroines and a rareability to create vivid and visceral action scenes most notably evident in itsheros climactic battle with the loathsome octopus known as the pieuvre ordevilfish. The central story in which its protagonist Gilliatt accepts thetask of freeing a grounded ship for which service he will be awarded the handof a wealthy shipowners daughter is energetically juxtaposed against richlydetailed pictures of seamens occupations and marine life that recall thoughin no way rival Melvilles definitive mixture of narrative and fact in MobyDick. And although Toilers is unmistakably more romance than realistic novelthe bracing bitterness of its ironic conclusion gives it a haunting stayingpower. Those of us who first read this novel in the Classic Comics version ofhalf a century ago will be grateful to discover that Hugos impossiblygrandiose and overblown yarn remains as perversely irresistible as ever.Kirkus Reviews «