The Invention of Hugo Cabret

If a picture is worth 1000 words, then The Invention of Hugo Cabret is easily the longest story I’ve ever read. Yet, I read it in 3 hours last night. It’s a 500 page story told mostly using pictures, with text adding the dialogue of the characters involved. The book itself clocks in at somewhere over 500 pages, with roughly 80% of them being pictures, all rendered in black and white.

But this isn’t a comic or graphic novel like Watchmen. It’s a unique approach to storytelling via the book medium. And it’s done very effectively, with the opening of the book being the best example.

It opens with pictures of the Moon over Paris to set the scene. As we flip the pages, night changes to dawn and we zoom in on a building which is revealed to be a train station. As we continue to flip through the pages our attention is brought to a young boy, whom looks to be about 10 or so, as he navigates through the station and into the vent system. Eventually, we part ways with him and we are introduced to an old man in a shop who is keeping a close eye on a large clock across the street. The boy is hiding in that clock, watching the old man’s shop. The sequence of pictures that reveals this part is amongst the most clever in the book in my opinion.

To this point, the “reader” has not encountered a single word, save for those in an introduction at the very beginning. We’ve probably flipped through 40 pages of pictures or so and we have now been introduced to the 2 main characters in the story. The reader is now introduced to the initial pages of text related to the narrative. If you’re not hooked by this point, then don’t bother.

The story itself is a simple tale about a homeless boy who has fixated on a quest that he believes will change his life. Hugo Cabret is a talented young clockworker who is rebuilding an unusual automaton. The story takes us through an extraordinary sequence of coincidences resulting in a happy ending for Hugo and the old man. The narrative drew me along easily as interesting tidbits are slowly revealed over the course of the narrative: the circumstances behind Hugo’s homelessness; how he came to reside in the train station; where the strange automaton came from; why he is compelled to fix the automaton. All this is revealed in Part 1 of the book.

Part 2 of the book is everything that comes after Hugo repairs the automaton. A pleasant surprise because my assumption from the start was the story would culminate in the repair of the automaton. When he runs it, it renders a picture with a signature. Resolving the mysteries behind the picture and the signature propel Hugo, and the reader, through the remainder of the story. All along the way, the book seamlessly transitions between pictures and text, sometimes punctuating a scene with pictures, sometimes laying out an entire scene in pictures, sometimes providing a viewpoint of the characters themselves.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret is a fast, pleasant read for any adult. Because of the pictures, it’s also accessible to younger readers. I showed the boy the opening sequence of the story and he was intrigued to the point of wanting to read it. The story moves quickly and even though it becomes predicable at points, I found the characters interesting enough that I wanted to know how their story ended. While it’s tempting to consider the pictures a gimmick (or worse a storyboard for the movie), I’d say it’s more accurate to think of them as essential to the story in question and actually a clever vehicle for telling the narrative.

Hugo Cabret’s invention is well worth discovering.