The story of three young provincials of no great heritage who together helped to destroy a way of life and, in the process, destroyed themselves: Camille Desmoulins, bisexual and beautiful, charming, erratic, untrustworthy; Georges Jacques Danton, hugely but erotically ugly, a brilliant pragmatist who knew how to seize power and use it; and Maximilien Robespierre, “the rabid lamb,” who would send … send his dearest friend to the guillotine. Each, none older than thirty-four, would die by the hand of the very revolution he had helped to bring into being.
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Mantel created an interesting psychological study of the 3 men who were instrumental in the French Revolution. Not as compelling as her Cromwell trilogy, but well worth reading if you enjoy historical fiction which she does so well.
Not nearly as good as Wolf Hall.
This book is one of the great studies of how feudalism and divine-right-to-rule collapsed throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. The destruction of an ancient system of rule through violent overthrow isn’t simple. It’s not as easy as taking out the royal family. And this is what Mantel demonstrates, that the French revolution in its early days was actually a hydra with three male heads including Danton, Demoulin and Robespierre, though the person we always hear about is Robespierre (or Napoleon who actually came later). We also know the word guillotine because of the revolution. But Mantel isn’t content with these sound bytes, so the book is 748 pages, contains roughly 450 scenes and about 148 named characters. This is appropriate because Robespierre signed 542 arrest orders during a period called the Reign of Terror. The goal of a revolution is for the “innocent” to remove the old regime — the “guilty” — from power by whatever means necessary. What Mantel wants us to see is that the violent part of a revolution is usually a rush to judgment and many innocent and good people get lumped in with the guilty. Also, quite a number of the guilty manage to pass themselves off as innocent and good and escape. So the first to die are probably guilty, and the second to die are possibly guilty, but the third group to die is likely innocent. The book also shows that before you start a revolution, make sure you really want one, because you may become its victim.
What an impressive novel, to begin.
Hilary Mantel writes with precision, deftness, and sophistication. Her writing exudes a confidence and an arsenal of craft that often transcends the page. As with the finest literature, I don’t feel that I read this novel as much as I lived this story. That’s right, I’ve come through the the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror—with my head still on.
That said, I didn’t find A Place of Greater Safety an easy read, by any means. Mantel layers on humor, pathos, and tragedy without a railing; keeping up requires a fleet foot.
Mantel is a master with description:
December 1790: Claude changed his mind. He changed it on an ominous December day, when iron-colored clouds, potbellied with snow, grazed among the city’s roofs and chimneys.
Or:
It was a large and splendid room, and Camille was the least conspicious thing in it. The walls were lined with portraits, aged to the color of tallow and smoke; the grave ministerial faces, under their wigs and powder, were all alike. They gazed without expression at the occupant of a desk which had once perhaps been theirs: it is all one to us, we are dead. It seemed to give them no trouble to overlook Camille, no trouble whatsoever.
And she does this on nearly every page; startling images, sliced cleanly as though from life itself, tangible and textured. At those (many) moments when I felt lost in the narrative, what kept me going was the lure of the next delicious conjuring of imagery:
She wore a white dress, her auburn hair down, gathering and accreting to itself the last rays of the afternoon light. Fouquier was efficient. She was bundled into a cart that same evening. The bitter wind whipped color into her cheeks, and she shivered inside her muslin. It was growing dark, but she saw the machine against the sky, the sinister geometry of the knife’s edge.
I’ll be having nightmares of guillotines for years to come, I’m afraid. Thank you, Ms. Mantel.
Mantel charts the porous border between the personal and the political. The allure and revelation of power. Ego teetering between idealism and paranoia. The siren call of History.
The entire record of the human race has been falsified, it has been made up by bad governments to suit themselves, by kings and tyrants to make them look good. This idea of history as made by great men is quite nonsensical, when you look at it from the point of view of the people…
So says Maximillien Robespierre. Though as his hypocrisy deepens, he confesses: …The ghosts of souls departed begged their admittance, with faces of clay; they trailed the covert, feral odors, the long, slinking shadows of circus beasts.
Only to succumb to—other instincts.
The genius of this novel lies in the portraits of the three central figures: Robespierre, George-Jaques Danton, and Camille Desmoulins. Stroke by stroke, each accrues finer and finer detail. By the end, the complex web of threads connecting the three of them form an intricate a pattern.
Which, of course, makes the ending so searing. And magnificent.
Yet to return to an earlier point—this was a challenging novel, sometimes too much so. Part of my reaction on that score is that I went into it knowing next to nothing about the French Revolution. If I’d a better grasp on the history of the events, I’m sure I’d have spent less time wondering what the hell was going on. The factions. The Committees and Conventions and Estates. The sans-culottes. So that made for some hard going. Also, the cast is daunting—four or five full pages, listed in the beginning. And after a while, keeping track of Hébert, Hérault, Herman… was difficult.
I’ll take the blame for not being familiar enough with the history.
Still, I felt a level of confusion that often had me questioning whether I wanted to continue.
Hence my four-stars.
I’m torn, to be honest. The novel is such a display of virtuosity that it’s hard to quibble about the difficulties. Few writers could go toe-to-toe with Hilary Mantel. Her writing is extraordinary, her artistry of the highest level.
So let’s say four-and-a-half stars—that last half-star cleaved off by the National Razor (as they called it.)