I’ve seen Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo gracing a lot of readers’ favorites lists, so I was really excited to read this 1,243-page novel. Everyone says that the length shouldn’t be daunting because the book is so entertaining that the pages just fly by. Unfortunately, I won’t be adding this to my Favorites shelf, and although I don’t remember ever finding the novel boring, the length was a bit more tedious than people claimed simply because I wasn’t head over heels about the novel. I overall like and admire many things about the book and am glad I read it, but I constantly found myself with some misgiving or complaint.
I can definitely recognize the influence this book has had on the fiction landscape and admire how elaborately the story was plotted and imagined. Strip this story down to its bones and I love it. It’s sensational, dramatic, and enigmatic in the best ways possible. It’s so fun and satisfying to watch our Count mystify and exact revenge on the people who wronged him. But sometimes it felt too over the top or it felt like the narrator was idolizing Monte Cristo a bit too saccharinely and I wanted him to take a few steps back into reality.
I liked how the protagonist developed from the naive, trusting young Dante to the mistrustful, clever, and cold Count to the remorseful, hopeful angel of good. But I have to say I found each transition a bit sudden, and I don’t think the Count was very good at being an angel of good even though the narrative portrayed him as the ultimate hero. He adopted the same artful strategies when he was trying to right a wrong as he used for his revenge plot, and I thought that everyone around him would have better benefited from transparency. He was trying to step down from playing God because he realized he was causing innocent casualties, but he maintained the same level of control over the situation and turned his friends into his puppets. He irritated me a bit at the end because he was guiding the people he loved towards death to then claim he had saved them from it. So I didn’t like the ending in many ways just as much as I appreciated the realization that the Count had come to (that his path of revenge wasn’t sustainable), but I feel like I’ve jumped ahead in this review. Let’s back up…
The writing is nothing special, but it’s very easy to read. This is definitely a plot-driven novel, and like I said, the plot is very elaborate and well-conceived, but there were moments where I had to suspend belief. For example, Dante emerged after 14 years of prison, where he never saw the outside of his cell (and technically his friend’s), still in shape and with a muscular build. He did exercise within his cell, and he dug an underground tunnel with Faria for a bit (though I think the latter did most of the work before Dante ever got involved), so there were concessions made. But he was immediately able to swim a very long distance from the prison, and though I admire human persistence and sometimes superhuman ability, his strength was a bit unbelievable to me. And this is more of a small plot hole, but at the beginning of the book, he had had a difficult childhood. After prison, it was said that he had had an easy childhood. It was an inconsistency that took me out of the story, but it was nothing compared to the constant overestimation of the amount of time it takes to have a conversation. Characters would have a conversation that would last 15 minutes and somehow 3 hours have passed. And this happened every chapter.
I know that Faria gave him an extremely prosperous inheritance, but the Count spent his money so unbelievably lavishly it gave me anxiety. Perhaps I was just letting my frugal nature affect my enjoyment of the novel, but it was almost annoying how much money the Count was just handed on a silver platter. I guess to some extent the universe owed him that for his misfortune, but there was no limit; there was indeed no extent. He was able to have so many houses in all parts of the world, all furnished unnecessarily lavishly (I understand he had to keep up appearances and it contributed to him being an enigma, but there was no reasonable limit), he could spend outrageous prices on the smallest little thing he desired, he could throw money at charitable causes, and of course there was the furtherance of his revenge plot, and he still had money to spare to dress his young daughter lover (ahem, yes I’ll get to that later) in the finest jewels and dresses. It felt over the top, and I do realize it’s intentional, but that doesn’t mean I enjoyed it.
Something I found hilariously mortifying was that Monte Cristo goes around asking people to tell the story of how he himself helped them. For example, he asks the Morrel family to tell him the story of how they were near ruin and their father was going to commit suicide, but then an anonymous benefactor came in and saved them all so no one had to die and they were entirely financially out of the woods. And of course the anonymous benefactor was none other than Monte Cristo. Perhaps it was a literary device to show Monte Cristo’s humanity as tears fill his eyes or to remind us of all the good he’s done or to show us how the characters reacted through unnatural dialogue, but it was so self-indulgent and made him seem like an uncouth braggart even as he deliberately maintained his anonymity.
And it wasn’t just Monte Cristo’s character that was subjected to this. Dumas did Valentine and Maximilien so dirty in their first convo. This was the first chapter that each was featured prominently in the story, and so much backstory was presented in the form of unnatural dialogue that came off as complaining or boasting. Valentine and Maximilien were such a crucial part of the Count’s transformation into a more kind pseudo-god that actually cared about bystander casualties (and made him realize that the “sins of the father” rationalization maybe wasn’t as sound as he thought), but Dumas gave them such a sorry introduction.
Now to explain the daughter lover that I promised to come back to.…This wasn’t a huge part of the book so I could push down the disgust I felt whenever the plotline came up, and I need to make concessions for the time period, but feeling a romantic attachment to a girl you have raised since childhood will always remain a huge no from me. It’s weird. That’s all I’m gonna say about it.
Again, I love this book for its impact and its ingenuity, I love how it unfolded, and I think anyone who loves revenge plots or the genre that Dumas basically embodies would love this book, I just didn’t vibe with many aspects of it.
