Sergeanne Golon

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 show more 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 ...? show less

A few years back well in France I just had to visit Versailles and the main reason was having read this fast passed romance. I found this delicious book on my granny's bookshelf many years ago, boy when I read the cover, I was thinking what is she doing with this sultry book. So I snuck it back to my room to consume with much eagerness, it did not disappoint, then I found out this was the second in a series. Nothing would stop me now I had to get the rest of them. I enjoyed each and ever show more one. (well ok the first 6 or was it 7). These books are all well worth the read if you can find them. I still have a few floating around so that I can at any time relive my youth and dream about the Sun King and Angelique at the amazing Château de Versailles show less

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?

Still a great trash read. The tale of the "emerald-eyed slave of passion" was a great escape 50 years ago, and still reads well today. The first book is the best of the lot, while the sequels show a progressive deterioration. For those who require a moral justification, you do learn some French history