Goodreads: The Count of Monte Cristo
May. 26th, 2020 11:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cyrano"The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexander Dumas
I enjoyed the beginning of the book, even through the part in Hotel d'If where things started to slow down. Once Edmond escaped and then spent a chapter deciding how to retrieve his money without anybody else finding out about it, there began the slog. I understand that Dumas is setting up dominoes that he will eventually knock down, but the book becomes obsessed with the minutiae of Parisian court life and also just how gosh darn amazing this dashing Count is. Apparently 15 years of malnourishment and limited activity turns you into an ubermensch who knows several languages, the history of everything, all schools of philosophy, in depth personal psychology, grants you banks of charisma to draw upon, and then combined with unlimited stores of money makes you nigh on omnipotent. Of course, the shape of his head may have played into this, because the book believes in the idea that the physical shape of a person reflects their personality and intellect. The book also has a lot of dialogue which, true to the style of the time, talks a lot without really saying much. More so even than usual. I was over the halfway mark by about a hundred pages, the Count was giving his first big party at Auteils, and he was giving his servant a mathematics instruction to determine how many settings to serve at dinner when I bailed. My friends who reviewed it here were all very fond of it, and maybe that party is the pivotal moment when momentum picks up again and the book is once more fun to read. But I hadn't the patience to push through.
I enjoyed the beginning of the book, even through the part in Hotel d'If where things started to slow down. Once Edmond escaped and then spent a chapter deciding how to retrieve his money without anybody else finding out about it, there began the slog. I understand that Dumas is setting up dominoes that he will eventually knock down, but the book becomes obsessed with the minutiae of Parisian court life and also just how gosh darn amazing this dashing Count is. Apparently 15 years of malnourishment and limited activity turns you into an ubermensch who knows several languages, the history of everything, all schools of philosophy, in depth personal psychology, grants you banks of charisma to draw upon, and then combined with unlimited stores of money makes you nigh on omnipotent. Of course, the shape of his head may have played into this, because the book believes in the idea that the physical shape of a person reflects their personality and intellect. The book also has a lot of dialogue which, true to the style of the time, talks a lot without really saying much. More so even than usual. I was over the halfway mark by about a hundred pages, the Count was giving his first big party at Auteils, and he was giving his servant a mathematics instruction to determine how many settings to serve at dinner when I bailed. My friends who reviewed it here were all very fond of it, and maybe that party is the pivotal moment when momentum picks up again and the book is once more fun to read. But I hadn't the patience to push through.