The Count of Monte Cristo (1844) by Alexandre Dumas

It feels like I've been reading this one for years, though it's only been about 3 months.

I plodded through what is perhaps Dumas' most famous work in fits and starts; devouring it by the chapter here and there, before reverting to consuming only a few pages per week, and back again. The Count of Monte Cristo has some really damaging pacing issues, possibly a quirk of its publishing format. It was originally published as a serial, and after reading through about half of it I ceased focusing on it by itself and began reading some other stuff concurrently. I enjoyed it a bit more when regularly spelling it with other books, as it's heavy enough that it needs some air here and there.

In general, I found the first and final thirds of the book consistently entertaining. While Dumas can dip into melodrama here and there (I swear some portions of Robin Buss's English dialogue feel more like an episode of the Simpsons lampooning The Count of Monte Cristo than the actual book itself), and, at times, his stubborn Romanticism bleeds through into places that call for a more realistic tone, I couldn't help but to enjoy the ride. It veers from Arabian Nights-like hashish-inspired dreams, to political drama and court intrigue, to classic Romance, and back again. As I made my way through its final pages, I found myself impressed at how tidily Dumas was able to tie up all of the loose ends.

When plodding through the middle of the book, however, I found myself continuously bogged down in new characters, new settings, and even callbacks to other more minor characters' backstories. There are several hundred pages in which the Count doesn't really do anything except plot his next move while attending the opera every damn night, which really slowed my progress and made wonder if I was reading the same "rollercoaster ride" everyone else praises as being action-packed. Once it does get moving again, though, it does reach a more than suitable conclusion as Dumas tidily clips each plot thread. There are a lot, and he manages them well, it just takes him some time to do so.

The greatest strength of the book is its plotting, and how differently it tells its story from beginning to end. I was shocked to find Dumas building up his protagonist, Dantes, only to have him switch gears several hundred pages in and begin to tell the story from several different points of view. While initially a bit bewildering, I felt it ended up giving me a strong viewpoint on just how much Dantes had changed from the beginning of the story, which was something that might not have been made obvious had our viewpoint remained aligned with Dantes' limited third person narration. Afterwards he becomes something of an enigma, and often I felt that I had forgotten for a moment who the titular Count actually was, thinking of him as a wholly different character, until Dumas would remind with a line here or there (one of my favorites is one of the Count's servants mentioning in passing that he never sleeps with the windows shut, as he always requires a view of the sky when indoors--a clear reference to his prior 14 years of imprisonment). In this way Dantes' character splits noticeably from the likable, naive protagonist of the first few pages, and becomes the cynical, driven Count, and we only see the two personae merge once again at key moments later in the story. The impact on me as a reader was astounding.

While telling such a grand story isn't without its pitfalls of convenience to help bring things together when necessary (there are not one, but two instances in which characters conveniently hear some privileged information by hiding in bushes at precisely the correct moment), I still felt amazed that Dumas was able to weave such a story together in such a deft manner. Perhaps most impressive is the way in which Dantes is able to attain his various revenges. None involve anything so trivial as open violence, as Dantes' prefers instead to rend his opponents' very souls in the most mentally destructive, ingenious ways possible. Dantes takes everything away from them, in the most painful ways possible, using only their own misdeeds. This is a game in which they've provided the pieces, and Dantes, moving as an unknown, using his persona of the Count as a mask, merely aligns these pieces against those who initially added them to the board. They aren't even aware someone is plotting their downfall until it's too late, and in many places of the story, we aren't either, until something clicks. Dumas arranges everything with subtlety, though sooner or later each new revelation or piece of minor information leads the reader to the outcome that Dumas has set up. Dumas is subtle with Dantes' movements; he doesn't insult his readers' intelligence, and prefers to leave the clues in front of the reader rather than tell them outright. It's something I grew to love about the story.

I found that some of the other characters lacked a compelling depth, though. There were a number I had become interested in who existed to drive the plot in a relatively artificial manner, and I felt like Dumas already had ample wordcount to turn them into something more. Dantes is fantastic, and I quite liked Caderousse's casual cowardice and opportunism, which requires no deep motivation to explain. Other characters, however, could have used some. Valentine serves as nothing more than the object of Morrel's affection, and some backstory as to just why Villefort is so driven and ambitious could have made the punch of the courthouse climax hit even harder. At times I felt that these characters didn't really have any reason as to why they are the way they are, or why they're making the decisions that they do. They simply do it because it suits the plot.

The Count of Monte Cristo is oddly uneven considering its reputation on the internet. Every time I see it mentioned it's met with nearly universal praise, but I found it pretty clearly flawed, though still enjoyable. I still can't shake the feeling that I seem to have read a different book than everyone else. Is the passive peer pressure of popular opinion really that strong? Did everyone secretly read an abridged copy and pretend otherwise? Am I just a nincompoop?

Well, one thing that sets it apart from every other book for me is its length: it now occupies the mantle of being the longest book I've ever read. So there's that.

⭐⭐⭐