A Place of Greater Safety - Hilary Mantel
Sep. 22nd, 2021 09:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
troisoiseauxCurrently rereading Hilary Mantel's RPF historical fiction about the French Revolution, A Place of Greater Safety, which is probably on my list of books I'd bring to a desert island.
Mantel knows you know how this story is going to end - like, even if you aren't super familiar with the French Revolution as actual history, it says on the back that none of its main characters live to see thirty-six - and writes with as much unsubtle pathos and dramatic irony as possible. When she introduces the future Lucile Desmoulins, it's as a teenage girl musing in her diary about the execution of Mary Stuart and how she "would like to be a queen," but not Marie Antoinette— "a more tragic one." Early in the novel, Robespierre - who will go down in history as the architect of la Terreur - is so distressed over having to condemn a man to death while sitting as a judge in his home province of Arras that he's physically sick. In one of the more absurd moments of momento mori, Camille Desmoulins has his palm read by a fortune-teller who takes one look at his life line and gives him a refund. It's not as overbearing as it sounds - these examples only stick in my head because of how awkwardly obvious they are - but it's definitely emotionally charged by its own inevitable end.
Is it good? Debatable. I mean, I clearly liked it well enough to read four times in the past, oh, round up and call it a decade; I was already interested in the French Revolution when I first read it, and I loved how Mantel breathed such life into the people involved. (I fell hard for her depiction of Camille; I've had a soft spot for him ever since.) I personally enjoy the rather— inconsistent voice seems a bit strong, but how it shifts between third- and first-person (mostly from characters' POVs; at least once from the author's) narration, and occasionally a scene is just straight-up a script— but I can see how someone else wouldn't. There is something that leaves me feeling kind of ??? about the female characters. (This is not entirely unrelated to its - how do I put this? - somewhat discomfiting undercurrent of horniness.) It's also such a convincing blend of history and fiction that I always have this nagging sense of my own irresponsibility for... reading, and having All The Feels about it...? I don't know— something about this book puts me in the weirdest defensive crouch of a mindset when I try to explain why I love it so much.
Tl;dr, why must a book be good? Is it not enough to watch an utter tragedy unfold in slow motion??
Mantel knows you know how this story is going to end - like, even if you aren't super familiar with the French Revolution as actual history, it says on the back that none of its main characters live to see thirty-six - and writes with as much unsubtle pathos and dramatic irony as possible. When she introduces the future Lucile Desmoulins, it's as a teenage girl musing in her diary about the execution of Mary Stuart and how she "would like to be a queen," but not Marie Antoinette— "a more tragic one." Early in the novel, Robespierre - who will go down in history as the architect of la Terreur - is so distressed over having to condemn a man to death while sitting as a judge in his home province of Arras that he's physically sick. In one of the more absurd moments of momento mori, Camille Desmoulins has his palm read by a fortune-teller who takes one look at his life line and gives him a refund. It's not as overbearing as it sounds - these examples only stick in my head because of how awkwardly obvious they are - but it's definitely emotionally charged by its own inevitable end.
Is it good? Debatable. I mean, I clearly liked it well enough to read four times in the past, oh, round up and call it a decade; I was already interested in the French Revolution when I first read it, and I loved how Mantel breathed such life into the people involved. (I fell hard for her depiction of Camille; I've had a soft spot for him ever since.) I personally enjoy the rather— inconsistent voice seems a bit strong, but how it shifts between third- and first-person (mostly from characters' POVs; at least once from the author's) narration, and occasionally a scene is just straight-up a script— but I can see how someone else wouldn't. There is something that leaves me feeling kind of ??? about the female characters. (This is not entirely unrelated to its - how do I put this? - somewhat discomfiting undercurrent of horniness.) It's also such a convincing blend of history and fiction that I always have this nagging sense of my own irresponsibility for... reading, and having All The Feels about it...? I don't know— something about this book puts me in the weirdest defensive crouch of a mindset when I try to explain why I love it so much.
Tl;dr, why must a book be good? Is it not enough to watch an utter tragedy unfold in slow motion??
