A Place of Greater Safety (1992)

This book is a huge undertaking (and not at all a good poolside read). I like historical fiction, but this is FOR REAL historical fiction. At times, I had to stop reading and Google what was happening so that I could keep up. During the two weeks it took me to read (which is VERY unusual), I also took breaks and read lighter books because the French Revolution is definitely HEAVY. The many different POVs were also daunting. Overall, it's a very interesting book...but it doesn't make me want to read Wolf Hall anytime soon. ( )

As Hilary Mantel states in the author’s note, "[t]his is a novel about the French Revolution and almost all of the characters in it are real people". Mantel goes on to write that the novel “is closely tied to historical facts – as far as those facts are agreed – which isn’t really very far”. The narrative focuses on three men who are central to the Revolution: the hard-headed pragmatist, Georges-Jacques Danton; the passionate rabble-rouser, Camille Desmoulins and the fanatic ideologue, Maximilien Robespierre. It follows their lives from their school days to the height of the Reign of Terror.

I came to this extremely long novel not because I had any particular interest in the French Revolution, but because I fell in love with Mantel’s writing in [b:Wolf Hall|6101138|Wolf Hall (Wolf Hall, #1)|Hilary Mantel|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1336576165s/6101138.jpg|6278354] and [b:Bring Up the Bodies|13507212|Bring Up the Bodies (Wolf Hall, #2)|Hilary Mantel|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1330649655s/13507212.jpg|14512257] and wanted to read more of her work. I was initially disconcerted by the extraordinarily long character list at the front of the novel: some thirteen (Kindle-sized) pages. The one disadvantage of reading a very long book on an e-reader is the inability to easily flick back through the pages, which meant that after that first eye-glazing encounter with the character list, I didn’t consult it again. However, I didn’t need to, as I had no difficulty following the plot and (more or less) keeping track of who's who.

Mantel’s style is idiosyncratic. She moves from past to present tense and from third person to first person narration, with the occasional instance of addressing the reader directly. Some of the narrative consists of dialogue in the form of a script. All of this shouldn’t work, but it does for me. I simply love the way Mantel writes. She has a wonderful way with words. Take her description of the Duke of Orléan’s former mistress, for example:
Felicité is a woman of sweet and iron willfulness, and she writes books. There are few acres in the field of human knowledge that she has not ploughed with her harrowing pedantry.
Or the way she describes Camille Desmoulin’s feeling about writing:
When it was time to write, and he took his pen in his hand, he never thought of consequences, he thought of style. I wonder why I ever bothered with sex, he thought; there’s nothing in this breathing world so gratifying as an artfully placed semicolon.
Although I read this book mostly because I want to read everything Mantel writes, it has also made me very much interested in the French Revolution. Thanks to Mantel, I feel like I understand what happened over those tumultuous years. More than that, I feel like I was there, inside the heads of the players. And even though I knew how it was all going to end, the final few pages still devastated me.

I keep telling myself that I prefer history and biography to novels about real historical figures. But Hilary Mantel converts me to historical fiction. I've spent two weeks totally engaged with the meticulously researched world she has created and I completely believe her version of the French Revolution. If I could give this novel more than five stars, I would. This was another buddy read with my friend Jemidar, who shares my fan girl enthusiasm for Hilary Mantel's writing.
( )

This is the story of Camille Desmoulins, Georges-Jacques Danton and Maximilien Robespierre and their role in the French Revolution. A hugely interesting book, I also found it confusing because of my limited knowledge of that period of History. The changing allegiances, the Committees, the meetings, the drama - it was hard to keep track of everything that was happening. But despite that this is an amazing work of fiction - the author is in command of her subject and of herself as a writer - every word is carefully chosen and every word has an affect on the reader - we share the joy and pain of the characters and move beside them on their journey from idealistic revolutionaries to their bitter end at the guillotine. ( )

In the late 1700s, the growing unrest in France by the populace leads to some men and women pushing their ideals towards the forming of a republic to great heights and for some, to great falls. This is the beginning of the French Revolution, and amongst the many characters who played a part in the fall of the monarchy, are 3 men, George-Jacques Danton, Camille Desmoulins and Maximilien Robespierre.

The relationship of these 3 men is fascinating. Danton is an ambitious lawyer, charismatic, lusty and full of purpose. Desmoulins writes incendiary pamphlets that are distributed around the country to expose corruption of the monarchy and injustices, but is seen as flighty bisexual. Robespierre is a austere lawyer whose ideals are lauded by many. All three share a long term camaraderie and all three share goals of ridding France of the current corrupt practices by the monarchy, but at the same time are not above indulging in their own form of corruption.

The progression they and the other characters in this absorbing historical fiction make towards scheming, planning and then the execution of their plans to build a republic is gripping. The author's use of letters, diaries and other documents lend a balancing weight to the creativity in which she bestows on the early lives of Danton, Robespierre and Desmoulins. As the revolution gains momentum though, we also see how idealism can sometimes be warped as egos grow in proportion to the power that is bestowed or taken by the men. Pride sometimes does come before a fall. ( )

Where I got the book: my local library. Spoilers but only if you never knew the French Revolution = wholesale death and that real characters who lived 200+ years ago may be a little on the deceased side by now anyway.

"Louise Robert says she would write a novel...but she fears that as a character in fiction Camille would not be believed. Indeed, I just had to look him up to make sure."

Oh, Camille. What a character. And he's flanked by two more tours de force of the literary re-creation of history. Mantel takes the lives of Camille (it's impossible to call him by his surname, Desmoulins), Danton and Robespierre from early childhood right through a date with Mme. La Guillotine.

What a study in contrasts. Camille, Mr. Dark Radiance. Danton, brutal, ugly, massive and yet strangely sexy. Robespierre, aesthetic, stiff, nerveless and cold. And then the other character, the French Revolution: unstoppable history, heartbreaking because it had to happen that way.

Mantel give us the Revolution in conversations. Chunks of dialogue interlarded with here a quotation, there a fact, yonder a dramatic scene. But it's the conversations and the thoughts of the person through whose eyes we're seeing that drive the logic of the inexorable slide toward the Terror. In the Cromwell novels, Mantel funnels everything through Cromwell's POV; here, we're endlessly shifting, a habit I decry in many novels but Mantel pulls it off. She also gets away with switching tenses and generally leaving the reader to work out what's happening by herself. And she does this over 749 pages, which makes it a novel not for the fainthearted. Well worth the reading if you can manage it. ( )