Book Review: The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged)

This was over 1200 pages of book, and I completed it in approximately 10 weeks! So I guess that is about 17 pages per day. It was really good, so that wasn't tough to do. Plus, I didn't read much Bible during that time!

The book was originally written in French. There are still French words used like Monsieur and Le Comte. But the translation I read was in English. I wonder how the movie treats this. The actors I'm sure will be speaking English. Will they have French accents? I also wonder how the movie treats the length of the story. I'm sure it does not cover half of what happens in the book. I've also wondered about the abridged version, and what was cut out of there.

The first 300 pages were really riveting...but in the remaining pages the plot slowed down, because. his revenge is quite elaborate...but I'm getting ahead of myself since I want to explain some plot.

Edmond Dantes was a bright and talented sailor. He arrives back home in Marseilles at the beginning of the book. His captain had died during the trip, and he was sure to be promoted. He was excited to see his dear father, whom he saw first, and then his fiancee, whom he decided to get married to the next day.

Dantes' captain had given him a letter when he died, that he was to deliver to an island. He was quite naive and didn't know the contents, but it happened to contain news of a Bonapartist conspiracy. One of his rivals, Danglars, wanted to be captain of the ship, and he had a plan to get Dantes in trouble. Another rival, Fernand, was in love with Mercedes, Dantes' fiancee. So Danglars knew about the secret letter, and told Fernand that he could write a letter to the authorities reporting that Dantes had a letter of interest.

So Dantes was all ready to get married, when the authorities showed up and took him into custody. He would have been found innocent, but there was another twist. The main authority, the crown persecutor, was Villefort. And the letter had some incriminating information about his father. This information would have ruined his own career by association with his father. So he overreacted and put Dantes in jail, in the lowest dungeon, just in case he knew anything about this. Dantes never got to say goodbye to his father or his fiancee.

So probably no one is still reading my review. But I shall continue, but with fewer details.

Dantes meets an old wise man, Faria, who is a prisoner digging through the dungeons. Faria is an academic and an inventor, but the prison guard thinks he is insane. Faria teaches Dantes everything he knows. I won't say how, but finally, Dantes escapes the prison after 14 years, and finds the hidden treasure that Faria told him about on the island of Monte Cristo . From this point on, he is the richest person imaginable in the world, and he plots revenge against the three men that put him in prison.

No one recognizes him because they all believe he's dead, plus he has aged and is pale from being in the dark for so long.

The revenge is quite elaborate, and it's what the rest of the book is about. The book is also about Dantes, now called the Count of Monte Cristo, and how he has become a very smart man, able to come up with elaborate schemes. He has become very talented at everything, including spending his money lavishly. He buys horses that he sees by offering way too much, and rents out an entire hotel, orders fish from across the globe, and many wacky things. A lot of this is to impress all of the people he is trying to get revenge on, because they have all become rich as well. But he makes them look poor in comparison. He wears costumes and plays different roles to trick people.

He has a God complex and claims that God has given him authority to punish those who have done wrong - he truly thinks much of himself, and is a different person than the jovial young man he was at the beginning.

So that's the end of my plot summary...I don't like to share the end, and I'll be watching the movie with Courtney. The writing was quite poetic, and that is possibly more enjoyable than the plot itself. This is another odd thing about it being a translation. Was it more poetic in French, or is the English about the same effect? I'm guessing the same.

In conclusion, I can't imagine writing a book this long, but I HAVE read one! Maybe pick up the abridged version. It's probably decent.