A Place of Greater Safety in Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge

Oct 21, 2011 Erin rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2011

This book took me an absurdly long time to read, but man, was it worth it. Hilary Mantel's brain is some sort of freakish treasure - every time I read her, I am simultaneously elated by the beautiful things she creates and depressed that I will never be able to write the way she does. She breaks so many rules (constantly changing POV not just between characters, but from first person to an anonymous third, to her own voice, to a script format, back to traditional dialogue, &c.), but it all works This book took me an absurdly long time to read, but man, was it worth it. Hilary Mantel's brain is some sort of freakish treasure - every time I read her, I am simultaneously elated by the beautiful things she creates and depressed that I will never be able to write the way she does. She breaks so many rules (constantly changing POV not just between characters, but from first person to an anonymous third, to her own voice, to a script format, back to traditional dialogue, &c.), but it all works.

This book is billed as being about Robespierre, Danton, and Desmoulins, but let's be real - this is Camille Desmoulins' book. And that makes sense. Camille's easy to love because his opinions seemed to run pretty parallel to our own: he was present for and instrumental in all the heady early excitement, inciting the rioting that led to the storming of the Bastille, for instance, but when things got out of hand, he was quick to condemn the Reign of Terror (and he and his beautiful young wife seem to have really loved each other, so don't discount the power of a love story). It's no surprise, really, that he was a favorite of the Victorians, who saw him as a noble martyr for goodness or something. I don't care about that Camille.

And thank god Mantel didn't fall for all of that. Camille's her most sympathetic character, yes, but he's also a little shit. She doesn't ignore the fact that he's the Lanterne Attorney, that he delighted in violence - you get the feeling that the Vieux Cordelier came about partly out of genuine moral distress, and partly out of petulance, as if institutionalized terror repelled him because he preferred the good old chaotic kind, the kind that had made him the revolutionary darling of the people only a few years earlier. He's a dramatic, reactionary little jerk, and his ideals are very dear to him - until those ideals are turned against a friend, aristocratic or otherwise. He's a mess, and he's rather wonderful.

Not to imply that the book is 100% perfect. I read somewhere that Mantel claimed she began writing this book as a Dantonist and came out of it a Robespierrist, but I don't see that reflected in the text. Robespierre himself is amazing (a little bit of personal bias may be coming through here, but I think you'd agree - he's as exacting as you might expect, but entirely human in a way you don't always get to see), but all of her Robespierrist characters are oddly-portrayed. If she's such a Robespierrist, why the uniformly negative depiction of the Duplay family, even when Robespierre himself is narrating(even poor Éléonore, whose portraits do not support the constant barrage of comments about her plainness)? Why Robespierre's personal distaste for Saint-Just, a man who would remain his closest ally until they died on the same day? Even the structure of the plot is Dantonist - Robespierrists don't generally imply that the fall of the factions was the de facto end of the Revolution, because what does that say about Robespierre's own abilities? A book about Camille Desmoulins is going to be inherently Dantonist, but there were still some choices I didn't really understand.

As for Danton himself? He's tough to love, but fun to read. A bit of a brute, hugely egotistical (granted, with good reason) and generally self-interested. Like the rest of the book, he's very well-drawn, but he never inspired much in the way of feelings.

Oh, I don't know. Mantel is a genius, and her books are art. She balances the personal and political so well - I don't want to imagine it in less-skilled hands. The reader would race through the political discussions to get to the next scene with Camille and Lucile (or, well, Camille and Danton or Robespierre or anyone; her Camille is definitely a flirt). But Mantel's mind-blowing, and I was never bored for an instant. My grasp of the French Revolution isn't as strong as my grasp of Tudor history, so I was a little worried that I wouldn't love this as much as I loved Wolf Hall, but I think I may love it even more. I am awed. ...more

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Mar 30, 2010 Christian rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction, french-revolution

This was an ok book. If you liked Wolf Hall, you might enjoy this one as well. It is written in the same style, with a minimal and contemporary use of language. For the historical fiction purist, this will be something of a turn off. At about 750 pages, it did plod a bit. To my mind, a good historical novel makes you want to know more about the history of the period covered. In this instance, I want to read more just to find out to what extent she completely invented the historical persons in he ...more

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