A Place of Greater Safety

De: Hilary Mantel

Narrado por: Jonathan Keeble

SUNDAY EXPRESS BOOK OF THE YEAR

“Mantel's writing is so exact and brilliant that, in itself, it seems an act of survival, even redemption.”—Joan Acocella, The New Yorker

Capturing the violence, tragedy, history, and drama of the French Revolution, this novel focuses on the families and loves of three men who led the Revolution—Danton, the orator; Robespierre, the cold rationalist; and Desmoulins, a fellow conspirator.

It is 1789, and three young provincials have come to Paris to make their way. Georges-Jacques Danton, an ambitious young lawyer, is energetic, pragmatic, debt-ridden—and hugely but erotically ugly. Maximilien Robespierre, also a lawyer, is slight, diligent, and terrified of violence. His dearest friend, Camille Desmoulins, is a conspirator and pamphleteer of genius. A charming gadfly, erratic and untrustworthy, bisexual and beautiful, Camille is obsessed by one woman and engaged to marry another, her daughter. In the swells of revolution, they each taste the addictive delights of power, and the price that must be paid for it.

©1992 Hilary Mantel (P)2013 W. F. Howes Ltd

French Revolution

What a fantastic job Hilary Mantel did on this book and the readers were great,

Less a novel

than an attempt to encompass the whole history of the Revolution in the love triangle of three men. It’s wonderful, and never boring, but is a bit exhausting.

The narrator goes in for voices. Working class characters have cockney accents, which is a bit odd but gets the point across. He gives some of the women shrill and unpleasant accents which is too bad and ruins some passages. His voice for Camille has the stutter which Mantel refers to but does not indicate directly in his speech. At first, I found that hard to listen to, but over time it became my favorite part of the performance.

Phenomenal

In-depth and riveting, this novel provides a glimpse into the French Revolution from the perspective of the revolutionaries themselves. The performance is superb and leaves nothing to be desired.

Stunning work —- again

You may have to work at following the times and characters but that makes it so real. Aren’t we all following the same kind of non-linear path? And the events become so clear with the extraordinary construction of the main cast. I can’t say enough high praise for Mantel’s retelling of history’s most compelling era.

Puts a human face on the French Revolution

The great strength of this book is how personal it makes the French Revolution, which makes it easier to understand and follow the dizzying series of events amid the chaos of this confusing period in history. Mantel brings her powerful imaginative and research skills to put flesh on the bones of three key authors of the revolution. She also takes the traditional focus off poor Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, in so far over their heads, and focuses instead on the massive economic inequality and starvation that drove the mob. Mantel shows how the mob provided the brute force that backed the architects of the revolution in cracking the absolute power of the monarchy, and then how the same mob power backfired against them. She also breathes fallible humanity into each of these characters, with their appetites for fame or just plain appetites.

As she conjures the "great men" of the revolution, she faithfully brings us the women who came along with them, and reveals how few choices their society left women, even as the rules were changing at such a grand scale.