From Publishers Weekly
Appropriately, Burney begins her performance in the adorable upper registers of the 14-year-old Marie Antoinette, shipped to France by her mother, the Empress of Austria, to marry the 15-year-old Dauphin and peacefully conjoin France and Austria. Unfortunately, Burney continues in this insipid tone throughout her reading, which is understandable as Naslund (
Ahab's Wife) portrays Marie as Little Mary Sunshine until the moment of her death by guillotine at age 38. Her love affair with a Swedish diplomat is strictly platonic and her inability to empathize with the French people is laid to her paternalistic advisers. All this may or may not be historically true, but it leaves listeners with Marie's diary-style descriptions of her personal and court life: the Dauphin's sexual limitations, the birth of her children, her clothes and hairstyles, girlish friendships and expensive banquets. The abridgment reinforces this focus by cutting little early on, then skipping quickly from one incident to another as the revolution evolves. Naslund's writing is clear and vivid, but offers little for those seeking a deeper understanding of the reign of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
-- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe:
Audio CD
.
*Starred Review* The author of the ambitious
Ahab's Wife (1999) has tackled another fictional challenge: the life of Marie Antoinette from her "birth as a citizen of France" at age 14 to her execution, told from her own point of view. But how to be true to what we know about the queen, who, though her reputation for cluelessness is not entirely deserved, was not exactly a powerhouse of intellect and insight; and at the same time make her interesting enough as a narrator to engage the reader for more than 500 pages? Naslund solves this problem by endowing Marie Antoinette with an artist's sensibility, and through her eyes the French court and its extraordinary artifice and luxury come alive. At the same time, this pampered queen is intensely human in her epistolary relationship with her overbearing mother, her less-than-satisfying marriage (unconsummated for seven years), her devotion to friends and family, and her tragic end. Adding to the complexity of the portrait is the way Naslund employs her setting. Carefully researched details about such things as the decor at Versailles lend verisimilitude but also often serve as symbolic motifs. The reputation of a queen once scorned for her frivolity has undergone a rehabilitation lately, exemplified by Antonia Fraser's
Marie Antoinette: A Journey (2001), and Naslund's portrayal is firmly in that camp. Readers of serious historical fiction will revel in it.
Mary Ellen QuinnCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
-- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.
