these far and starlit shores

The layers and complexities are taking me by surprise, too. I read the full Brick when I was a sophomore in high school (more than a decade ago, eep) and I liked it a lot, but much of it went over my head, and I was left with the impression of Hugo as, like, a French Dickens? But he's oddly more complicated than that. He's even occasionally subtle, which is not a word I would instinctively apply to Hugo.