The Count of Monte Cristo
Ratings709
Average rating4.3
I could tell it was going to be a bit of a slog, and the audiobook I had didnt match the text in front of me and was only making me more confused.
I'd never be able to convey in words what this book is in terms of nobility, and honor, and beauty.
This is a book that I never had much interest in reading. Then I heard nothing but great reviews and I decided I would try. It’s now my favorite book of all time. The characters, the setting, the drama, everything about this book is flawless. The way everything is set up and paid off to perfection is pure art. It’s also the first book I read that made me tear up. It’s simply a masterpiece.
I'm embarrassed that it has taken me so long to read this novel, a classic of Western literature and favourite of adventure story fans the world over. The story of Edmond Dantés, the hapless sailor unjustly imprisoned over false accusations of "Bonapartism" during France's turbulent civil war period, embroils us in a story of violence, deceit, vengeance and redemption. And though it is most commonly considered an adventure story in the vein of The Three Musketeers or A Tale of Two Cities, I think it's more accurate to classify this fun (and expansive) novel as a genre-defining example of espionage fiction. Yes, Le Carré, Fleming, Deighton and all the others owe a big debt to the structure, plot and style of Dumas' breathtaking and exciting story.
I say this because of all the spy novel tropes Dumas seems to have invented. Disguise, subterfuge, miraculous escapes, clever ruses and traps, exotic locales, secret operatives and operations, compromised dupes, misdirection . . . along with James Fennimore Cooper, Dumas laid down a template that spy novelists to this day still follow. The novel, complex, lengthy, and twisty though it is, has a fairly simple plot which, by now, everyone knows: Dantés escapes from the dungeons of Chateau D'If, recovers a hidden treasure, becomes the fabulously wealthy "Count of Monte Cristo" and sets about avenging himself on the men who had him imprisoned. The fun is in the methods.
Dumas takes great pains to construct Dantes' elaborate plot of revenge, deftly weaving multiple narrative strands together, telling in great detail the many backstories that modern authors would banish offstage and merely summarize through exposition. No, Dumas, clearly paid by the word, lets his story sprawl for over 1200 pages across the Mediterranean. At times you will wonder "why are we suddenly in Turkey? What was the point of the Carnival scenes? Why is the Pope releasing a condemned prisoner?" Not to worry: it all comes together and climaxes with Dantés having his revenge. That's no spoiler. Of course he has his revenge and emerges the victor. Watching it play out, though, is immensely satisfying as we see the way Dantés, playing the long game, builds a sham edifice in which he traps his foes.
But Dumas tells more than a tale of revenge. This is a highly moralistic novel, one that decries the sins of pride, envy, wrath, jealousy -- hell even gluttony and lust show their faces. The ending, while bringing satisfaction, also leaves us a little sad, a little regretful that a good man, faultless and loving, loses himself in the pursuit of his vengeance. Dumas the dramatist tells a compelling, propulsive and ultimately satisfying tale. Dumas the moralist asks us to consider whether it is all worth it in the end.
The books starts off slow as you are introduced to the different characters and their backgrounds. But after that that’s when things start to get interesting and you’ll want to keep reading to see what happens next
Wow. This book hit. Seriously too good. Maybe a longer review to follow but for now... this is my favorite fiction book ... nothing comes close behind.
Great book ❤️
I'm a huge fan of the count of monte Cristo ❤️❤️and this manga adaptation was simply breathtaking
Final Rating: 5.0
Such a page turner, did not lose my attention once throughout this juggernaut! Amazing storytelling and on par with the Lord of the Rings 🫢
This is annoying because when I exported this from Goodreads I cleaned up my library over there. Somehow I deleted my Monte Cristo review. Without my reviews, I am a mess.
This book while brilliant would have been better served by not being published in a newspaper and instead as a single volume. You could cut four hundred pages from this text and the book would be the better for it.
Beyond that I loved it. A modern book would not have the gall to punish Mercedes.
The Count of Monte Cristo is a great book. It was a lot easier to read than most classics and was very entertaining.
Why it didn't get 5 stars: I loved the story of Dantes, but when he becomes the revenge-seeking Count of Monte Cristo, he becomes unemotional and is harder to relate to. Also, I feel like he takes his revenge a bit too far, making intricate plans to make his enemies as miserable as he could and then destroy them. It was harder to connect with the characters during the middle chapters because it switched to different characters' perspectives so often, but at the end it started to come together in the end.
What I liked about it: I really loved the beginning, it's such an intriguing story. The rest of the book is great too, but the beginning was definitely the best part. I wish I hadn't read the book description so I could be surprised.
Note: I read the Duke Classics version on Libby
DNF
When people tell me this is a great story with great characters, I believe they're being honest with me.
But like most old literature, I found the characters flat, the dialogue tedious and reading a slog. I gave up.
This book is fantastic. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.
I am a bit saddened that the journey is now finished. This book had (has?) me in it's grasp and I yearn for even more pages, haha!
The page count held me off from reading this for a long time, but that wasn't much of a problem once I started reading. It sucked me right in and didn't let go.
It has something that kept me intrigued and curious and kept me wanting to continue chapter after chapter. There are many layers to the book.
There were a few moments where I thought “why am I reading about this, I want to get back to ...”, but these things cleared itself up quickly enough not to form a bottleneck.
Also, the time period, especially the late Napoleonic era where the book starts, was interesting and prompted me to learn more about that period in history.
The Penguin translation by Robin Buss reads very well.
The first 200 pages were pretty great, but the rest was mind-numbingly boring. Monte Cristo is an iconic character but the rest were entirely forgettable and unrealistic. Two thumbs down.
I finished the count of monte cristo. I..finished..the count of monte cristo, i finished the count of monte cristo – hold on, i am not done, i FINISHED the count of monte cristo!
inspired by lorelai gilmore when she realized she was no longer held bound to friday night dinners when rory made the deal about yale
This was everything. I have absolutely no words to describe the spectacular way the story was told. Dumas' incredible brain, the easy and well translated words and such brilliant characters. I loved Edmond, I adored Valentine, and I despised Fernand and Danglars with all my heart.
There are no words to describe the love I came to have for this book and though I am feeling accomplished that I finished this book but I am saddened to know it has come to an end.
Edmond Dantès is a young man with everything—a woman who loves him, a career on board a worthy ship, and men who respect and admire him. Then he is falsely accused of treason and imprisoned, in isolation, in a fortress, without trial, and his life dramatically changes as everything is taken from him. It is three men who conspire to have Dantès disposed of, and it is against these three men that Dantès plots his revenge during the fourteen years he spends in prison, a revenge he feels that he will be unlikely to ever carry out. His life changes again when he comes to know the friar in the adjoining cell, Abbé Faria. It is this friar who teaches Dantès many important things and becomes a source of courage and wisdom amid the terrible life Dantès is living in the prison.
I've never felt 1100 pages turn so quickly as I have while reading this amazing story. Love, hatred, evil, goodness, revenge, forgiveness—it's all in this book. And the tale is still as fresh as if it was published last week.
More than 2⭐️ but not enough to round up to 3.
Okay, am I the only one who though this book was very frustrating and uncomfortable?
It started so promising - an innocent man is betrayed by envious and jealous fake friends and ends up in a terrible prison. There was some great adventure, some nice secrets and some interesting characters. I was affected and engaged and had such high hopes.
And then it turned into this strangely sadistic tale about a guy whom I simply could not, for the life of me, understand. I am gonna say it here - the reformed Dante acted with absolutely no empathy. And not just towards his enemies. Even when he was attempting to do good, he was doing it in such a strangely sadistic way that I honestly felt uncomfortable reading through it. For example, the way he brought both the old and the young Morels to the brink of suicide before he intervened, despite his ability to do so earlier, was absolutely unnecessary and baffling. It only makes sense if he did it because he enjoyed the drama of it more than he cared for the wellbeing of his only real friends and that is nothing to admire him for. And what was even more frustrating was that the author tried to play it as "they knew the depths of despair so they could experience supreme happiness" which is simply dishonest. Indeed, overcoming troubles does help one experience higher levels of happiness, but in these cases it was unnecessarily prolonged to the point of doing irreversible damage.
Everything good Dante does is tainted by his less than respectable motives and villainous manner of execution.
The author also seems to have a strange obsession with suicide and murder as forms of preserving one's honour. I assume that it's probably dictated by the morals of the period this book was written in, but it still made me extremely uncomfortable to read about it.
Not to mention the insane amount of exposition. And while I can acknowledge that this was typical for the writing style of the time, I still found the book somewhat bloated.
I had quite high expectations of this book and I'm a wee bit disappointed.
Sublime and accessible
A spectacular story filled with wonderful prose. And if you read all the footnotes you'll triply well read.
A wonderful novel! Characters who felt alive, a plot that feels dynamic and unpredictable, prose that is simultaneously poetic and grounded. Thought-provoking and highly entertaining. The book is packed with wisdom; I gathered some 15 memorable quotes from it.
At its core, the novel has exactly one message: be defined by what you have, not by what you lack. Dantès struggled with this in his first years in prison (we all would), but we see that suffering can strengthen humans to an unbelievable degree. In his conversations with Faria, it is evident that Dantès fully embraced this message. Compare this to Maximilien's circumstances: he continued to define himself by what he lacked, so his resolve to kill himself remained until Valentine returned to him. Maximilien never had the trials by fire that made the Count understand this message.
From a religious perspective, this book is in extremely murky waters. Christianity is ever-present in the book, with the Count frequently associating with God in some way, first as His emissary and then as His equal. With this in mind, the Count believes that he can distribute “divine justice.” We can thus view the Count as a foil to Jesus Christ: the Count was a fraudulent “divine emissary” and enacted his revenge, while Jesus was truly divine and forgave all. In all, even if Dumas did not intend for justice to appear this morally problematic, the Count's justification in his quest for vengeance is nearly blasphemous.
What makes this whole justice question even more ironic is that the death that made the Count question his justification in achieving vengeance was that of Madame de Villefort. She poisoned four people, and the Count believes he took a step too far in indirectly enacting justice on her? Additionally, the Count was perfectly fine with letting the Saint-Merans, Barrois, and Valentine be casualties in his retributions, even though none of them deserved his “divine justice” by any justification. (The Count regretted the poisoning of Valentine only after Maximilien told him of his love for her.) In conclusion, I had many moral misgivings towards the Count which prevented me from liking the character. I understand that he reflected on these failings, but his own repentance was nowhere near sufficient. Still, the nuances presented by his situation were extraordinarily thought-provoking, such that they make me more inclined to recommend this book.
Nonetheless, I can't give this book five stars for a couple of reasons. First is Dumas himself. From Robin Buss's introduction, I learned that he wrote for money. For this reason alone, he didn't necessarily seek to explore the tragic and ecstatic depths of the human soul like, say, Dostoevsky (who was it that said “all great novelists die in poverty”?). Instead, Dumas made a plot that he knew would be popular. Certainly, there is some timeless wisdom in the novel, but his “popular novel” formula can really be felt; it feels cheap at times, such as when Valentine magically reappears at the end of the novel. Oh, and besides his approach to writing the novel, Dumas himself isn't a very upstanding character.
The second qualm I have with the book is the fate of Villefort. I thought that he was a good person at the end of the book. He might have made terrible mistakes in his past, sure, but I firmly believe in redemption. I don't think it was in character for Villefort to just back out of the court room when Benedetto revealed the whole quagmire of his history. I would have thought that he'd stand his ground, own up to his mistakes, and speak this line that he said only a couple hours before to his wife:
“For God's sake, never ask me to pardon a guilty man. What am I? The law. Does the law have eyes to see your sorrow? Does the law have ears to hear your soft pleadings? Does the law have a memory to make itself the conduit of your tender thoughts? No, Madame, the law orders and when it orders, it strikes.”
All in all, I wonder if I am the only one who believes that Villefort is the truly tragic character in this novel, not the Count.