How something so horrific could possibly happen is shown through full characterizations and likely scenarios that don't stray from the historical record, though we don't get (or need) all the details. I found it difficult that sometimes they were referred to as their christian names and then others as their surnames but when you get to around page 300 you have learnt that Desmoulins is also Camille, Robespierre is also Max and Georges/Georges-Jaques is also Danton. It seemed to Desmoulins that with the birth of this first child he had become like a man floundering around in a sucking swamp, with no glimmering of rescue. Again, I don’t know if there is any truth, in real life, to the rumor that Lucile and Danton were lovers.

This was another buddy read with my friend Jemidar, who shares my fan girl enthusiasm for Hilary Mantel's writing. So, yes, it is one of those rare books which has lived with me over the years and which I shall doubtless go back to again and again. Sometimes the whole group would be seized by pointless hilarity at some phrase such as "Your mother hopes you have been to confession," and would repeat it to each other for days with tears of merriment in their eyes.She was shaking, and said over his head, "I didn't want to show him, it was Grandfather Carraut who said it must be done. Being very interested in history, particularly the French Revolution (in which the novel is set), the book turned out to be the perfect choice for me, as Mantle's ability to seamlessly interweave fact with fiction proved to be excellent. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. I found myself struggling with a slow crawl through the social history of what should have read as very hard. Also, at times she employs an omniscient narrator to tell the leading events of the Revolution, and these parts can sound like a history book, although they are never dry or boring.

I was initially disconcerted by the extraordinarily long character list at the front of the novel: some thirteen (Kindle-sized) pages. because of the expectations surrounding the words ‘French Revolution’ ― that it was bound to be about ladies with high hair. I think it is a pity that we bring on your talents, then say to you"--the priest held his palm up--"this far, but no further. She is a two-time winner of the Booker Prize for Fiction for her novels, Wolf Halland Bring up the Bodies, Mantel is currently working on a third part to the sequence, titled The Mirror and the Light. I remembered quite a bit of the French Revolution from my long past school days, but this book was a friendlier, entertaining look at the confusion and inner positioning that took place.He smiled at it, and it learned to smile back: not with the amicable toothless grin of most infants, but with what he took to be a flicker of amusement. In a few years' time, young hopefuls at the Guise Bar would ask him, why have you been content with such a confined stage for your undoubted talents, Monsieur?