So I have now read the source material the infamous musical comes from (not to mention a crapton of other adaptations). And perhaps it is true that haters, in point of fact, must hate; but the musical is much better at presenting a coherent handling of narrative than this book.
Which is not to say that I didn't enjoy it. The novel feels almost episodic, and despite its length, and its many tangents, it seems almost rushed in places, whereas the musical develops at a much smoother pace. You know where the beats will be.
The book is curiously coy about the existence of the supernatural, whereas most adaptations seem to either embrace or dismiss it. Some of this -- in fact, a lot of my frustrations -- are rooted in the fact that a century ago in France, they simply didn't play cricket by kosher rules as we do today. Er, that is, the genres and tropes used were codified differently. And I recognize that, and I appreciate the flavor this gives the story. But I'm still reading it in 2012 (in fact, I read it in 2012 on a series of planes), so I think my tribulations are still valid.
The perspective is very wonky. While much of the interactions still center around Christine, Raoul is our primary perspective character, meaning it's very nearly an epistolary novel, in that someone is always relating the action someone else missed out on. This is largely true even when Raoul is NOT the perspective character, and it has the interesting (and deliberately crafted) effect of the whole text boiling down to rumor and hearsay. Not an unreliable narrator -- the author calling out the unreliability of all narration. That's kinda nifty.
But it also means that poor Christine gets less agency than ever in a lot of ways, and that we are forced to see her story through the eyes of (and therefore, making the story more ABOUT) the men trying to rescue her.
Raoul is still boring. Erik is still creepy. The managers are more comedic than ever, which is nicely handled, and Madame Giry is still the coolest person we ever meet (unless Meg Giry is cooler?). Let's move on.
The other element of the story that's totally missing from said infamous musical is a whole character who is kind of a little bit important: The Persian.
First off, Orientalism Ho! Dude never even gets a name. He's mysterious in the first act and everyone finds him either sisnister or daffy. There is a lot of inherent fail herein, however period-appropriate it may be.
That said, he seems to be our most reliable witness; he's the only person to know the Phantom's secrets in full detail, and when we finally get around to his perspective (he narrates THE WHOLE DAMN CLIMAX despite never having been given perspective before... but that's okay because poor Raopul would have been an awful narrator since he didn't know what the blithering balls was going on at that point and would have been hard-pressed to provide a cogent voiceover).... where was I? Oh yes, when he narrates his tone is straightforward, and he is treated seriously as a human being and an individula whose own experiences are normal to him. So that's cool.
Another problem is that early on in the book, the narrative, which is meant to be understood as a retrospective tell-all piece of reportage, informs us that a certain character will die and that it is a central event. Every once in a while the narrator reminds us of this in an omniscient aside. However, that character not only has very little stage time, meaning we don't really give a damn about them, but they die off-stage, too, in a way that is entirely incidental to the story going on. It was very jarring to me just how unimportant, structurally speaking, that turned out to be. But again, given the unreliable-narrative-reporter angel, the bare fact of this death would have made the papers as one of the most important headlines, so maybe it's justified? I don't know.
Anyway. A muddle, but a fun muddle providing insight into the craft of novel writing as it was practiced in Leroux's day. I'm curious to hear the thoughts of anyone else who has read it.
