I remember reading this book aloud for my grandmother (like: 12 years ago? @@)
I've found it enchating and fascinating. It certainly has a quality of storytelling hard to come by nowadays.
Some aspects of the story, some characters and events seem rather abstract of illogical - I found it hard at first to make the mental leap necessary to understand some behaviours of the characters - but that'a a by-product of our times (our values and motivations and even common concepts would've been quite abstract in the times of Hugo).
Still - a captivating tale, definitely worth reading!