Enjoyable and well written. The Queen still comes off as narcissistic and petty, but the history is thorough and the language flows in all of the flowery and pastel hues of Rococo art. (I did almost cry at the end.) ( )

This is a great book! It lends a different perspective of Marie Antoinnette. It was simpathetic to her but it also revieled how boring court life could be and that the frivolities were mostly all they had to ammuse themselves with. It was an interesting historical fiction novel because it was written from her point of view. I thought that it was an interesting book. I recomend it to anyone who is interested in history and not just facts. ( )

here Marie Antoinnette is the sheltered, sweet, self-absorbed queen of France, fast easy read, enjoyed it ( )

It's boring.

http://shelfandstuff.blogspot.com/200... ( )

I enjoyed this book very much. The author is definitely sympathetic to Marie Antoinette's plight. She was portrayed as an innocent young woman of 14 who grew into a somewhat innocent and naive Queen. Those who are adverse to this portrayal may not care for this book. I thought Sena Jeter Naslund treated the events in Marie Antoinette's life with respect and thoughtfulness. ( )

I got this one at Book Expo as an advanced copy. It was a great read! I was a little bit crazy about Marie Antoinette for awhile, so I tore through it. I also remember reading it on the couch while the entire family was sick with the flu. I read and helped kids puke in the bathroom...too much information... ( )

Mon Dieu! About two-thirds of the way through this book and I was ready to cut her head off myself! I get the impression that the author was sympathetic to Marie Antoinette, but she sure comes across as one self-absorbed, spoiled, immature brat in its pages. Certainly by the last 100 pages I felt for the woman, but honestly her materialism never wavered and I did get tired of hearing about how amusing she found her own thoughts and comments. Not sure if she said "Let them eat cake!" or not, but this novel did nothing to make me believe that she wouldn't! ( )

http://modern-american-fiction.suite1...

Sena Jeter Naslund reinterprets the life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, from her childhood in Vienna through the French Revolution until her final hours in prison.
The Teen Queen

Abundance is told in the first person by Marie Antoinette and reads like a journal interspersed with personal letters. We witness a young, inexperienced woman becoming aware of herself, her feelings and her environment. The reader feels sympathetic towards Maria Antonia who is handed over at age 14 to the Bourbon court to become the bride of the dauphin, Louis Auguste, the future King Louis XVI of France. She is the 15th child of Maria Theresa, Empress of Austria, who brought unity to the Habsburg Monarchy and is considered one of its most capable rulers.

The Habsburgs were one of the most powerful dynasties in Europe and their success was supported by dynastically smart marriage arrangements. “Let others wage war, you, happy Austria marry!”

(Du glückliches Österreich heirate!)
Maria Antonia's rebirth as Marie Antoinette

The novel's opening sentence "Like everyone, I was born naked", refers to Maria Antonia's rebirth as Marie Antoinette, a citizen of France, on an island in the Rhine near Strasbourg. The island was considered neutral territory. Here the young girl is stripped naked and asked to give up everything Austrian including her name, her clothes and her pet dog.

The story unfolds like a classic tragedy in five acts. The outcome is known, the telling is gripping. After an awkward wedding night, the conflict is established. In failing to consummate their marriage Louis Auguste fails to give Marie Antoinette what she - and the French people - want most: a child and an heir to the throne.

The Queen remains childless for eight years, and she is despised and ridiculed for it. She shows her husband patience and kindness, but isolated and imprisoned at the court, she also remains ignorant of the country's growing economic and political crises. Naslund reinterprets famous incidents as the affair of the diamond necklace and the flight of the royal family to Varennes helped by Count Axel von Fersen.
The Queen's Favorite: Axel von Fersen

Marie Antoinette's relationship with Fersen is a chaste one in this novel. As the Queen and the young Swedish officer become soulmates, she is growing more aware of herself , her duties as an adult, a wife, a mother and her role at the court.

“Ah, I think, if I cannot falling love with the Dauphin, I can at least love myself. Then I ask myself, how can this be so?...The answer comes in an echo of the roar of love and admiration I heard when I entered Paris. I can love myself, I have confidence in myself (as the young Fersen, just my age, has confidence in himself)... The idea is intoxicating!"
"Am I the hated Queen or do they still love me?"

At the end of Act 4 the Queen realizes that those who stormed the Bastille find her a ready target for all that is wrong with France: "I know they may wish to imprison us or worse, their addiction is to intensity, be it love or hate." And yet she still does not want to believe that the people will revolt against their "good" king, who showed them an abundance of affection.

Fearing for her family's life, Marie Antoinette finds solace in prayer. The 50 pages of the 5th Act race to its inevitable end; Marie mounting the scaffold and facing the guilliotine. Robbed of her children, thrust into jail and faced with execution she does not break down, but maintains her dignity and offers forgiveness to all her enemies in a farewell letter.

Sena Jeter Naslund: Abundance. A Novel of Marie Antoinette, HarperCollins, New York, 2006.

PBS Film: Marie Antoinette(2006): This website has a timeline, facts about the royal life in Versailles, and details about the making of the film.

Under Resources it also has an excellent bibliography.

“I have ever believed that had there been no queen, there would have been no revolution.”

Thomas Jefferson

The copyright of the article Abundance by Sena Jeter Naslund in Modern American Fiction is owned by Christine Welter. Permission to republish Abundance by Sena Jeter Naslund in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

This is a strong historical novel, impeccably researched and told completely in the first person, which is a bit risky,considering that the subject in question is Marie Antoniette and it covers her last 24 years. Overall, I feel it works and would recommend it. ( )

June 2007: http://www.3rsblog.com/2007/06/just-f... ( )

This book is subtitled “A Novel of Marie Antoinette,” and is a fictionalized biography narrated by Marie, covering her arrival in France in 1770 at age 14 as the intended bride for the Dauphin through her execution in 1793.

The author, Sena Jeter Naslund, says “The story of Marie Antoinette has fascinated and frightened me since I was a child. To me, it was a reverse fairy tale…” She felt “the historical treatment of Marie Antoinette has been motivated, in part, by the tendency to demonize women…I wanted to explore the complexity of a woman who has been included in the historical picture but usually misrepresented.”

Naslund succeeds in making Marie Antoinette a multifaceted character rather than the shallow, heartless woman usually depicted by history. Unfortunately, she takes 539 pages to do so, including a lot of detail about the abundance of splendor (flowers, music, opera, theater, gardens, chateaux) in Marie’s life. In contrast, Antonia Fraser’s Marie Antoinette: The Journey (on which Naslund’s book is based) covers the same material plus Marie’s pre-France life plus a post-death epilogue in 458 pages – and it has color illustrations and extensive notes, sources, and an index in additional pages.

Both books treat Marie sympathetically, as the neglected youngest daughter and 15th child of powerful Austrian empress Maria Teresa, who was woefully unprepared to be Queen of France. Her initial popularity in France declined as it took over SEVEN years for her marriage to be consummated (neither the Dauphin nor the Dauphine really knew what they were doing) and 11+ for the birth of a son, and of course in those days these things were always blamed on the woman!

Constantly criticized in letters from her mother and mostly ignored by her husband, Marie took up extravagant habits such as gambling, buying numerous dresses, and elaborate hairstyles. Changes she tried to make in court life and her close friendships with women were misinterpreted.

Yet these books also show a Marie Antoinette who did show concern for the common people, ultimately becoming less extravagant and more generous, and she was a loving, caring mother and very brave at her death. Apparently it was easier to blame a female foreigner for the problems of the French monarchy and economic conditions that led to the French Revolution.

I found some of the secondary characters equally fascinating: Marie’s friends the Princesse de Lamballe and the Duchesse de Polignac, her friend (and possibly lover), the Swedish Count Axel Von Fersen, and the artist who painted Marie many times, Élisabeth-Louise Vigée-Le Brun. I would be especially interested in a book (fiction or nonfiction) about the latter.

Abundance was an okay book, but I’m not sure I would have read it had it not been for my local book club. I would suggest reading Fraser’s biography instead. ( )

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I just got back from Paris and Versailles and I had to read something about Marie Antoinette. This was such a great book and I never knew that the majority of her time spend in France was at Versailles. The book gave a different side of Marie Antoinette and it didn't portray her as the cold hearted bitch I've always read about. I think the author sought to show that she really was a nice person. ( )

This book would probably not interest the casual reader. I think you would have to really enjoy the time period and characters to appreciate it. The book is very long and a bit dry in some places. It reads more like a history book than a novel. ( )

Even though I knew the ending, I still cried.

That is the power of Naslund's writing.

I learned a great deal about the French Revolution that I had probably studied in high school but forgot, plus this novel brought to life the various relationships that are so meaningless when listed in history books.

I recommend it to anyone with even the slightest interest in history. ( )

Sena Jeter Naslund is in my top 3 favorite writers. I think she did a great job with this book, however I did not enjoy it. My attention did not hold. I bored with Marie Antoinette and I got very tired of her life in the French court! I started skimming 3/4 way through. ( )

Sena Jeter Naslund’s novel Abundance offers a first-person account of Marie Antoinette’s life from the time she was 14 until her execution. This well-researched historical fiction draws on source documents such as correspondence between Marie Antoinette and her mother, the Empress of Austria, as well as other personal correspondence and memoirs of her contemporaries. Naslund employs published scholarly research into the life of Marie Antoinette, the French Revolution and the art and architectural history of the city of Paris to provide an accurate background in which to set her subject.
We meet Marie Antoinette on literally neutral ground, as she leaves her homeland and travels to France to become the wife of the future King Louis XVI. She is young and innocent, having been given in marriage to further strengthen the alliance between Austria and France. The writing style at the opening of the book is rather flowery, with a lot of attention given to description of the surroundings, buildings and clothing Marie Antoinette sees on her journey and during her first months and years at Versailles. As the book progresses and the marriage is finally consummated, these musings of Marie Antoinette mature as well.
The writing becomes still more cohesive as the Revolution begins and the Queen is more aware of the world outside her palace walls. The indulged girl has grown into a mature woman who understands that there are economic and political problems in the country.
This novel will give the reader an accurate portrait of the setting of the Queen’s life, as well as a fair account of how her thoughts may have been maturing as she grew into her role. It will pique one’s curiosity to learn more about the history of the time, the palaces in which she lived, and the people with whom she associated. ( )

Abundance is a novel of Marie Antoinette's life in France from her own point of view. It begins with her leaving everything Austrian behind in order to begin a new life as wife to the French Dauphin, and it ends at her death at the hands of the Terror.

I especially enjoyed the first parts of the novel which included excerpts from several letters written between Marie Antoinette and her mother, Empress Maria Theresa of Austria. These letters really helped ground the action in historical fact and they also lent an extra degree of depth to our main character - as we saw her desire both to rebel against her somewhat overbearing mother as well as her deep desire to please her.

All in all, I found the book to be a believable portrayal of the notorious Queen of France. She does her best to live up to everyone's expectations; she tries to be kind; she even tries to economize. But her life of privilege and abundance is and has been so divorced from the plight of the common people that she does not realize the true impact of her continued gifts to her friends, nor of the many indulgences she allows herself.

I found the idea that Marie Antoinette was always SO good and SO dutiful and SO kind to be a bit hard to swallow. Her moments of rebellion are so few and so underdeveloped (we never see why she gives them up) that she comes across as an unbelievable goody two shoes at least part of the time. Spoiled young people (such as she was) fly off the handle sometimes and do things they regret. That never seemed to be the case here, and I sorely missed it.

On the other hand, I very much enjoyed the descriptions of the growing affection in her relationship with the Dauphin as well as of their marital difficulties, although I missed some sort of indication as to how 'Toinette felt about these matters. And I was very happy to see her interactions with Count Axel von Fersen as well as the painter Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun treated in the book, though a little more detail here and there also would not have hurt.

On the whole I found this novel highly satisfying. I felt like I learned a lot about the history and about the people involved that I did not know before - always a hallmark of a good novel. Nothing struck me as outright implausible or wrong, but I know very little about life at Versailles during the period, so I cannot vouch for its accuracy. ( )

I've just begun this book, and--contrary to some reviews--I love the measured voice. It's beautifully written, beautifully observed. I loved Ahab's Wife, as well, and Abundance has that same remarkable quality of pulling you gently into another world. ( )

Abundance is the tale of Marie Antoinette, France’s doomed queen, slandered by many, but lately attempts to rescue her reputation have been made. Abundance is not an exception, portrayed Marie Antoinette as a naive girl, even when she is a woman, determined to do her duty but ultimately failing to understand what the populace needs from her.

It’s a challenge to get into this book. Marie Antoinette’s narration is strange and distant, which means it takes a good few pages to get used to and feel that you like her. She is her own impediment to reader’s affection, given that she is so distant from the real world throughout the novel. I don’t know that this is a fault of the novel, but she expresses her care for the people and how she does not wish to live extravagantly when she is surrounded by opulence. She’s almost too naive to care about, until the end.

The prose is well done other than this odd distant feel, and the other characters are portrayed fairly reasonably. I just find the entire situation hard to believe; luckily, I have Marie Antoinette: The Journey, on which this book was based, waiting to be read, so that I will be better able to justify the novel’s historical judgment. The plot moves along quickly, skipping years where nothing much happened, focusing only on the events. It is interesting to see the French Revolution from the perspective of the royal family, as I feel we are more typically given the history from the revolutionaries’ view.

In short, I found Marie Antoinette too saintly to be real, though I doubt she committed all the crimes that the populace claimed, but I did find the other characters and the relationships in the novel to be genuine. I would say that Abundance is a fairly typical historical fiction, not bad but not great either.

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The author of the magnificent Ahab's Wife is here way too self-indulgent. She tries hard to treat the subject--Marie Antoinette--sympathetically, which I guess I appreciate, but there is, after all, not much to be sympathetic to. The main theme of the first half of the book is whether or not she & louis would ever consummate their marriage. It gets very tiresome, so I bailed out at the half-way point. A big disappointment from a good author. ( )

It's almost worse to know how it ends sometimes, especially if the writing is as good as it was here- you feel yourself getting drawn into these characters' lives and their thoughts and feelings, only to know that it all ends with a resounding thud. This was a very different, compassionate take on Marie Antoinette, one that I'd like to believe is closer to the truth than the false "let them eat cake" caricature. Highly recommended. ( )

The story of Marie Antoinette and her becoming queen until her death at the guillotine. The book is very like the movie with Kirsten Dunst. ( )