A colleague once recommended the Angelique books by Anne Golon, knowing how much I love The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy, but the English translations are hard to find (and expensive!) Luddite that I am, I finally discovered a PDF copy of the first novel, which I have been reading on my Kindle for the past two weeks! 800 pages for a first novel, which eventually became a series with twelve sequels!

Despite the small text, which I had to read in landscape format, and the never-ending pages, I did enjoy Angelique. Set in mid-seventeenth century France, the titular heroine is the daughter of an impoverished nobleman - is there any other kind? - who is a bit of a wild tomboy in her youth, playing in the forest with the village peasants, but also a budding beauty with golden hair and green eyes. Her father marries her off to a 'lame and disfigured' count, Joffrey de Peyrac, twelve years older than Angelique, whom she at first refuses to submit to but eventually falls in love with. Joffrey is meant to be the romantic hero of the novel but I could not take him seriously at all. He's a self-made man and a talented scientist who extracts gold and silver from rocks while also being a ladies' man with a 'golden voice' who teaches about the art of love in his 'Palace of Gay Learning' (I'm guessing the meaning got lost in translation over the years!) Joffrey woos his very young bride by serenading her and waiting for her to give into him because he's so incredibly irresistible to women, despite his scars and limp (from being thrown out of a window into the snow as a baby!)

Angelique is happy with Joffrey and they have a son together but when the two travel to Paris to attend the wedding of King Louis XIV to the Infanta of Spain, the romantic melodrama kicks up a notch or ten! (And yes, despite all the reviewers in denial, Angelique is definitely a romance novel - well researched but hardly serious historical literature for all that.) After offending the fragile ego of the King, Joffrey is thrown into the Bastille on trumped-up charges of witchcraft and faces trial, which his wife attends in secret, dressed as a nun! Conditioned by the Pimpernel books, I was expecting a last-minute escape but Angelique is left in Paris to survive on her own, with a young son and a baby on the way. What I love about the character is how resourceful and indomitable she is, battling lovers and assassins, living in poverty in the Court of Miracles with thieves and beggars and then rising again to earn money working in a tavern. She also takes stupid risks and attracts all the wrong men, who she can't seem to resist, from childhood playmates turned gang leaders to cruel and ruthless noblemen. Golon is a bit sketchy about the line between romantic conquest and rape, too, which caused a few raised eyebrows while reading. Angelique never loses her stunning beauty, either, despite ten years of poverty in Paris:

And Angelique was lovely. She had a proud carriage and in her eyes an expression that was at once reserved and bold. These eyes could at times transmit insolence, a challenge, but also the innocence of a very young and sincere person. Her smile transformed her, revealing the warmth of feeling she bore to her fellow creatures and to life.

Is Angelique a whacking great romantic cliché? Hell, yes, but she's entertaining and (mostly) sympathetic too. Did the book need to be 800 pages long, however? Not at all. Will I be joining Angelique in Versailles (book two)? Not for a while! And do I suspect that we haven't heard the last of Joffrey ...? ( )

A series of unfortunate events. The heroine isn't particularly likeable, and although other characters in the book consider her bright and precocious, her actions show her to be naïve and foolish, and she's unwittingly the architect of her own misfortunes. She's such an underdog though that it's impossible not to root for her.

In fairness this is only the first volume of a novel originally published as one unfeasibly cumbersome tome. Perhaps events will be less unfortunate in the second half? ( )

Pilfered from my mother's cabnet, this is the first really good historical fiction book that I ever read. Don't let the title or the picture throw you, this is not category romance. It's still one of my favorites, and I would love to see it be republished. It inspired me to learn French and go to France. ( )

My favorite series ever. I've read and reread them over the years countless times! ( )

First of all I must confess that I am not a big reader of historical romance so please bear in mind that you may not share my opinion if this is a genre you're more familiar with. Set in 17th-century France, this follows our tomboyish heroine Angelique from her free-spirited childhood in the Poitevin countryside to her arranged marriage. Betrothed to the Comte de Peyrac, whom she has never seen, Angelique is shocked by her first meeting with this scarred and forbidding figure. But, with time, she will come to learn to see beyond first appearances and to savour the companionship of an intelligent, charming and seductive man. However, she will come to learn that no one is safe from the antipathy of courtiers and clerics.

While I enjoyed some of the characters, such as Joffrey de Peyrac, I had some difficulties with Angelique herself, I'm sorry to say, and felt that the attitude towards women in the book was rather dated (unsurprisingly, of course, since it was written in 1957). She has very little agency and there is a great deal of her swooning, having her bodice ripped and being either ravished or rescued by men. Personally I am not hugely enthused to read the rest of the series, although I say once again that probably if you are fonder of the historical romance genre than I am, you will enjoy this much, much more than I did.

For a full review, please see my blog:
http://theidlewoman.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/angelique-book-i-sergeanne-golon.html ( )