Having enjoyed Naslund’s "Ahab’s Wife" previously, I was looking forward to her new historical fiction about Marie Antoinette. The story begins as 14-year-old Marie, daughter of the Empress of Austria, journeys to France to wed the 15-year-old Dauphin (Louis XVI); and ends with her memorable death at the guillotine during the French Revolution. Throughout I had to keep reminding myself that, although intensely researched, this was a work of fiction -- it was like reading the intimate thoughts from someone’s diary. I felt both sympathy for Marie and the royal family and pity at their self-absorption and naïveté. The reader is not made to think they are truly evil or ruthless people, but that the fault perhaps lies in how they are raised in a world of true opulence; isolated, untouched and unaffected by the reality, and often the plights, of the average citizen.

posted Oct 28, 2006 at 11:58AM

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