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Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. I feel guilty about ever doubting Antonia Fraser's ability to weave an exciting narrative around Marie Antoinette. Those first few chapters were clearly laying the ground for me to genuinely care about Marie, and as a result I got completely swept up in the waves of destruction coming her way in the second half of the book. I couldn't stop reading after finishing this week's portion and ended up reading the whole thing. I'll go into more details when you host the next discussion but those last 100-120 pages displayed multiple crescendoes of the kind of absolutely gripping narrative that I'm more and more only getting from biographies these days. A phenomenal success of a book, thank you so much for selecting it.
I'm catching up! Picked up my copy at the BPL and am up to chapter 11. I have to tip my hat to you Steve this is an impressive read. I have read a lot of history over the years but stayed away from 17th and 18th century Europe because of the overlapping families and dynasties. Ms. Fraser cuts through all of that and is very readable and enjoyable.
It must be very difficult to make the details of a life interesting and sympathetic without crossing the line too far into historical fiction ala Wolf Hall - and I think Fraser does a great job. I did a quick read of a Short Introduction to the French Revolution - and that helped to provide. a bit more context that didn't quite come through to me as forcefully in the biography - that a series of wars under previous Kings had left France in a perilous financial situation and attempts to avoid state bankruptcy ( by Necker) by increasing freedom of trade ( and therefore propping up the confidence of France's creditors), resulted in increasing prices and shortages in Paris fuelling the "revolutionary spirit." Sorry for the essay - but it really emphasized the "fire storm" approaching Marie and Louis XVI. I certainly felt sympathetic towards them both - but the King's brothers, that's another story !
The intrigue, the suspense! Despite knowing the ending I’m staying right here in denial at the inevitable outcome for MA. She’s trying so hard to support her husband, protect her children and pacify the greedy revolutionaries and it’s heartbreaking to read.
I'm loving it. Especially the cozy (and not so cozy at the end) mystery of the necklace but I don't know what to believe about the whole thing, and how the pacing started picking up even more speed into the development of the revolution. Just fantastic!! And yes, Louis XVI is very passive and indecisive which makes him untrustworthy and annoying. He's that easy to hate main character in a horror movie. I don't care much about Marie. Everything happening around her is far more interesting.
Oh great, just what I need, me, a mere mortal who has a full time job that requires leaving the house wearing pants, and who subvocalises when reading and generally listens to audio at single speed.... another 20 hour audiobook to add to the tottering digital TBR pile...
Personally I am finding myself sympathetic to Louis XVI--by royal standards he's not a monster and in general I tend to have a high baseline sympathy for people who are just fundamentally unfit for politics/governance and yet forced by circumstances and/or birth to attempt it anyway--but I'm certainly not impressed by him in the slightest, and of the two of them Marie Antoinette, who also would have been far more suited to a different sphere, is doing a far better job of trying to rise to meet the times than he is. At least in this book, which I have been finding very convincing as I've been reading, though my familiarity with the history in this period is much shakier than I'd like it to be.
