I remember thinking the part with the financial shenanigans felt surprisingly recent. And I also remember thinking that the relationship with the young girl was creepy (although maybe not quite Piers Anthony level).
It had enough exciting or interesting moments to make it worth reading, but I haven’t re-read it in the last 30 years. Maybe I still have my copy somewhere in the basement.
I’m a voracious reader, but I have to admit, this is one of the few books that I started and didn’t finish. I got about 2/3 of the way through, got distracted by another book and never went back. This partially because I saw the movie (the 2002 version which I thought was great) and knew how it was going to end, and partially because it just seemed to go on and on.
It’s another of those books that I enjoyed having read more than reading it. It’s partially redeemed by the cliff hangers, but not quite. It’s just too long, and after a while I was just reading to get to the end.
Sometimes I think I will go back and try it again. But probably not.
If you do tackle it, the Spark Notes are probably a good idea to keep track of “now who was this guy again and what is he up to?”
Regards,
Shodan
It definitely goes on and on, and IIRC the 2002 movie was a lot of fun, but it diverges wildly from the book, including in the ending. The ending of the book is profound, unsatisfying as a thriller, but ultimately far more satisfying than a traditional thriller ending would be.
Yes, that is the one to read. I’ve read it and liked it. Like any book that long and that old, it does drag at places, but overall I found it an enjoyable and worthwhile read.
I read the Count of Monte Cristo long ago, in the very early 1960’s. It made a very big impression on me, but I never read it a 2nd time, and hardly remembered the plot details.
Just now, I watched the 2002 movie. I did enjoy it, though the 7.8 IMDB rating seems too high.
I hardly blame them for short-circuiting the plot to make it happier. It’s still a good story, albeit a different one. Anyway, they made a 2-hour movie: To do justice to the whole plot would require a mini-series.
Absolutely, but spifflog said they knew how the book was going to end because they’ve seen the movie. The book ends differently from the movie.
Definitively a great book, I tried to read it when I was 12 or so, but it was too dense for me, tried again a couple of years later and absolutely loved it to pieces (literally, because my 2 inmense paperback tomes disintegrated under their own weight in the process of innumerable rereads).