#will tumblr flag me who knows we'll find out lmao

[ikeimen]

I’ve waited 677 days for this

based off this classic

[almondmisery]

Turns out I didn’t have the energy to cut it down, so here it is, in its full glory.

So last night I finished the audiobook of A Little in Love by Susan E. Fletcher, and I have...Thoughts.

To begin with, it was not very brick-accurate (briccurate?), which even I could tell, although my brick knowledge is quite rudimentary. Much of it (especially characterization outside of the Thenardier family and the Patron-Minette.)

It does predictable but not necessarily good things with Éponine, in my opinion, and switches up a lot of the events that happen in canon. This is not inherently a bad thing, but it did offend my sensibilities.

Below the cut (if tumblr lets me do the cut...tumblr please please PLEASE give me the cut) are my very meandering, poorly written, spoiler-rich thoughts. 

Edit from future me, posting this several months after writing it: this is so rambly and I absolutely am not proofing it lmao but I finally got access to a device that might actually do the cut so here we go.

It begins with a snapshot of Éponine's death, her laying in the street bleeding out, et cetera. This scene immediately put me off, because she is described as being one of the last to die. This was confusing, as she was one of the first, but again--messing with canon is not necessarily reason to dislike it. However, in the end of the book you find out the circumstances leading up to this, and later on I will describe why I don't think this was a necessary or even good choice.

We then dive into a mostly chronological description of Éponine's life. At first there's a lot about Éponine and Azelma, and the way Cosette entered their lives, as well as more background on Gavroche. In this adaptation, Éponine continues to try to be friends with Cosette for a while, even after she is first chastised for it. However, eventually this changes with the influence of her parents, and Éponine begins to be exceedingly cruel to Cosette. Before this happens, though, Éponine and Cosette actually take care of Gavroche together--neither of them are older than 6 or 7 years old perhaps, but they keep him alive with regular warm milk (cow's milk, I assume--Madame T leaves him on the floor and wants him to die so I don't think they're getting the correct stuff) and general keeping him warm. I imagine this would lead to a very malnourished child and stunted growth (after a quick search, it looks like cow's milk is terrible for babies. Not sure how he survived, but we'll handwave it because we love Gavroche :) .)

(Cosette’s hair is described as blonde. This was the first red flag to me that this adaptation is sometimes closer to musical-canon/characterization than book canon.)

After this, Cosette leaves, Éponine's dad kills someone, and that sends them on the run for years. At some point they take a boat (like a little one they found and dammed up the holes of) down a river, to hopefully end up in the Seine and in Paris. However, they end up leaving Gavroche behind here. Éponine, his primary caretaker at this point, is extremely upset and spends a lot of time wishing she had jumped out of the boat to go to him. If only.

Éponine has idealized visions of Paris, but she is disappointed by what she finds, because they end up living with Babet, which means they see members of the Patron-Minette all the time, and they're creepy people. Stealing continues to occur, because they’re the Thenardiers and that’s what they do.

I'd like to add here that Éponine talks to the stars, kinda Javert-style. It’s an interesting choice—she looks to them for comfort, and she thinks them proud of her when she is a kind person. It’s like if Javert’s moral compass was geared towards kindness rather than THE LAW. I can’t remember an instance of her interacting with them when she’s not been kind, but it might exist. Who knows. It’s already been a full day since I finished it, so I’m already fuzzy on the details (especially because it was consumed via audio. This also makes it more difficult to go review things, but it’s certainly possible—for example, I had to go and review the Gavroche-raising scene real quick.)

At some point, they finally steal enough to move into their own place and away from Babet. Éponine found a key and brought it back, thinking they could sell it if it were valuable, but it results in her parents and the Patron-Minette robbing some dude’s house. She feels immensely guilty about this. This kind of thing happens a lot.

They then move into the Gorbeau House. Woo, we get to meet Marius! Not right away, but I’m skipping right to it, because Marius! Wow, what a guy. Éponine rambles a bunch, Marius is kind, that whole thing. However, I want to skip to the next Marius scene, because wow.

So I think it’s the second Marius scene where this happens—it could be a different one, but I think it’s the second. Whatever it is, at some point when Marius is walking home from the Musain, where he was planning the revolution with all of his friends (???), Éponine asks Marius what his dreams are. I only remember the first part of his answer, but that’s mostly because I was so shocked I had to write it down. After a couple moments of consideration, Marius first says, “I want France to be a republic, of course. No more kings and queens.” He speaks of how much he loves his friends, and how much time he spends at the Musain. But like…??? This is definitely musical!Marius, not brick!Marius.

Marius meets Cosette, Éponine is jealous, and this eventually leads to her bringing a note to Valjean and Cosette in a park, pleading with them to give money. This leads Valjean to go to their house, where he almost gets killed. Éponine is supposed to be the lookout, but she hangs out with Montparnasse instead. Montparnasse calls her beautiful and kisses her. Éponine tries to enjoy it, but all she can do is pretend that he’s Marius, so she ends up rejecting him. He gets upset, she runs away, and gets caught by Javert. She and her family go to prison, where her mother dies (did this happen in the brick? I honestly don’t remember—I didn’t think so, but who knows), but she and her sister are released because they are too young. This is more or less where their relationship completely falls apart—Azelma (like the rest of her family) blames Éponine for getting them caught, and hates her.

Now that Éponine is separated from her family, she decides that she’s going to be kind, that she’s not going to steal. She finds out where Valjean and Cosette are living, and she starts sleeping in a tree outside their house, because she knows the Thenardiers and Patron-Minette might come to rob them. She spends six months looking for Marius. At some point, she tries to go into the Musain to find him, but she is stopped by Enjolras, who very disdainfully tells her that the Musain is “men only” because “that’s how it’s always been.” Like, okay, the back room of the Musain was men-only, but men have claimed the whole-ass café in this book? Damn.

Éponine finally does find Marius, and when she does one of her first actions is to lead him to Cosette. When she does, Cosette and Marius reunite happily in the garden, and then…go into Cosette’s house? Where Valjean is?

Like, okay.

Then the Patron-Minette tries to rob Valjean and Cosette’s house, Éponine shoos them away, and then realizes that she can’t protect them forever. So she leaves a note, goes to sleep in her tree, and finds out that they’re moving the next day.

Here, Éponine and Cosette meet! They have a whole long conversation about things, there is forgiveness, Cosette is nice, Éponine is also nice, and Cosette gives Éponine a letter to give to Marius, which Éponine vows that she will do. To the barricades we go!

We’re nearing the end here, folks. Éponine tries to go to the barricades, only to get yelled at because she’s female, so she dresses up as a boy. (There’s a clothing acquisition scene and it’s a thing but this is getting long.) Éponine gets to the barricade and sees Enjolras but can’t find Marius for a while. Then, she sees the gun, takes the bullet, and goes down. She stays there alone for a good while, hearing bits of the battle going on around her, including apparently, “Grantaire is dead!”

Which. Why???

This is not that important, but it irritated me, because. No other characters were mentioned other than Enjolras, so the author could have picked literally any other character’s name to put here. There were seven other options, six depending on whether you think they would shout that like that about Jehan (since it happened during the battle it doesn’t seem like it would) (also jehan died slightly before Ep was shot didn’t he?), but that’s quite a bit. Most of Les Amis died during the meat of the battle, but I’d like to note that Grantaire was sleeping through the whole thing. I assume this was more for namedropping purposes than anything else, but Jesus. Just. Ugh. If you’re gonna namedrop, do Bahorel or something idk. #recognitionforbahorel2020.

The battle continues, Éponine kinda drifts off for a while, and the battle ends (we find out Enjolras is dead…did they shoot him while he was alone? Grantaire died while Éponine was still conscious, so…), and Éponine is still alive at this point. She talks to the stars again, which is fun. It feels like she would have bled out and died already at this point, but okay. Marius finds her (he’s…still there after the battle? Alright) and is like “yo we’re taking care of injured people in the café so come with me and we can get you help”. However, Éponine is shot through the chest and as such will not be surviving this day. Marius is sad (and uninjured? And un-kidnapped-by-Valjean?) and she gives him the note, which was her goal all along. He kisses her on the forehead as she is dying, and then she dies. The end.

So that was a thing.

I didn’t like this book. I feel like I would have enjoyed it more if I didn’t have any familiarity with book canon—it definitely fits better into the musical canon, although some parts still deviate from that in a pretty major way. I still can’t get over the fact that her death was pushed to the end of the battle—it didn’t feel like it had to happen? It would be one thing if I felt like the death scene being moved made some big plot-thing possible, but I think it would have worked just as well in its original place.

Éponine’s characterization in this was interesting. I don’t think it was canon-accurate—she’s so much more of a classic hero ideal in this. Sure, she made some bad decisions in her past, but now she is Pure and GoodTM and couldn’t hurt a fly. The book doesn’t pin all of the change on Marius, which is cool. Éponine becomes kind because of multiple people, and she loves multiple people, and the book recognizes that. Points for not pinning the heroine’s entire personality on the love interest. However it did still seem to put a lot of importance on Marius. Which, fair I guess, she did literally die for him, but it certainly didn’t make it an easy read, I guess.

Decisions were made and I didn’t agree with them but props to the author for making Éponine a fairly complex character? She’s not flawless, she does do bad things, but her turnaround is very sharp. It’s just an interesting twist of canon, because there are quite a few things that are not even a little canon compliant, mostly in the second half. The first half is alright, suspending some disbelief.

Overall, I feel like I would have enjoyed it a couple of years ago, but now I found it kind of meh. Maybe a 5-6/10—there were still some good parts, but ultimately not my thing.

So I finished A Little in Love, that book that that anon recommended to @civilized-revolutionary , and I have some thoughts. I currently have 3 pages worth of rambling in Word, so once I cut that down prepare yourself for some Thoughts that I had