Alexandre Dumas
"The story of Edmund Dantes, self-styled Count of Monte Cristo, is told with consummate skill. The victim of a miscarriage of justice, Dantes is fired by a desire for retribution and empowered by a stroke of providence. In his campaign of vengeance, he becomes an anonymous agent of fate. The sensational narrative of intrigue, betrayal, escape, and triumphant revenge moves at a cracking pace. Dumas' novel presents a powerful conflict between good and evil embodied in an epic saga of rich diversity that is complicated by the hero's ultimate discomfort with the hubristic implication of his own actions."
I've had this book on my iPad (free, through iBooks) for a couple years, but had put off reading it because of its length (1,598 pages portrait; 3,060 landscape). And even now, though it's the only book I've been working on since May, I'm not quite finished. But it is definitely worth it. While I've had a little difficulty keeping some of the characters distinct from each other, and there are long stretches where things are happening, but nothing that really moves the plot forward, this mammoth work has earned the place it holds in literature. A true classic with a meaningful tale to tell. And it's decently quotable, as well:
- "Dantes had exhausted all human resources, and he then turned to God. All the pious ideas that had been so long forgotten, returned; he recollected the prayers his mother had taught him, and discovered new meaning in every word; for in prosperity prayers seem but a mere medley of words, until misfortune comes and the unhappy sufferer first understands the meaning of the sublime language in which he invokes the pity of heaven!"
- "There are two distinct sorts of ideas, those that proceed from the head and those that emanate from the heart."
- "Then sleep here, my dear count. The conditions are favorable; what else was opera invented for?"
Page 56/Sentence 5:
Portrait: Dantes, perceiving the affectionate eagerness of his father, responded by a look of grateful pleasure; while Mercedes glanced at the clock and made an expressive gesture to Edmond.
Landscape: Believe me, to seek a quarrel with a man is a bad method of pleasing the woman who loves that man.
