#58 The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux

Date Started: Monday, August 29, 2005
Date Finished: Wednesday, August 31, 2005
My BookCrossing Rating: 7 out of 10 stars
Comments:
I'm not really sure how I felt about this book compared to the Broadway musical and the Andrew Lloyd-Webber movie. Of course, the primary thing missing is the MUSIC... which I so love. It really makes the whole thing for me. Given that, the book was obviously a translation as the English is not necessarily written in a way that a native speaker would say or write it. Also, it was written back in 1911 so the language spoken in France at that time was also more proper than that which is spoken today. Given that, I can't say that it was difficult to read, just not as smooth as today's native English writers.

About the story itself, as was mentioned in the foreword, some liberties were taken with the musical and the movie, which in my opinion actually made it a bit better in some respects. But the book also went into more depth on the history and architecture of the Paris Opera House itself which you don't really get from the musical or the movie. All in all, I'd say they tend to complement each other fairly well, and I appreciate reading the book after having seen the Broadway musical twice, and I also have the extended DVD edition of the Lloyd-Webber movie in my personal DVD collection.

See the BookCrossing journal page for this book for more reviews and information.