A Place of Greater Safety

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In Mantel’s version of events, he is bisexual, but I do not know whether this is true of the real Desmoulins or not.

Later, Desmoulins really does fall in love with Lucile and marries her, despite her father’s objections, but is never faithful to her. In her father's house, where the brewer ranted all day and bawled his workers out, great joints of meat were put upon the table. The wet nurse pushed past them, the baby Augustin tossed against her shoulder, held with one hand as if he were a sack. From the double Man Booker prize-winner comes an extraordinary work of historical imagination - this is Hilary Mantel's epic novel of the French Revolution. A lovely passage at the end set my heart racing, in much the same way as my favorite metaphor in Wolf Hall and the final page of Bring Up the Bodies did.There was one paragraph where they gang raped a woman, cut her head off, ripped her heart out and drank her blood. It was a good, old, family name, he told Jacqueline's mother; it was a good, old family to which her daughter now belonged. And Camille Desmoulins: a genius of rhetoric, charming and handsome, yet also erratic and untrustworthy. The only slight downside to the book, but bear in mind this is completely down to personal taste, was that at times I felt that as a reader, one had to pay very close attention to Mantel's writing to fully understand her inferences, making it a book best read when fully awake, and not, perhaps the best choice for a relaxing evening read.

Brilliant, edgy historical fiction that captures the whiplash flux of the French Revolution with crisp immediacy on the page. The present tense passages might be meant to give more of a sense of immediacy, even though I see that in some of the past tense passages as well. There are many differences, of course, the main one being that here we get to be inside, though in varying degrees, the mind of more than just one person. Desmoulins is one of the few men of the French Revolution who thinks women should have the vote (Danton and Robespierre do not), and we cannot help but think that this is because of his wife’s influence.If you stand in the Place des Armes and look up at the narrow white facade, you can often see him lurking behind the shutters on the first floor. Danton, who comes from a rural area in northeastern France, has little formal education, but qualifies as a lawyer and goes to Paris, where he becomes friends with Desmoulins, who is, by this time, a struggling young lawyer there. I cannot think of a historical novel as good as this until one goes back to Marguerite Yourcenar’s “Memoirs of Hadrian”, published forty years ago. Desmoulins is a brilliant man, but not usually a great public speaker, because he has a stutter, which, according to Mantel, began when he was sent to boarding school at seven.

Before that, we're treated to long scenes during the childhood, adolescence and early careers of Robespierre, Danton and Desmoulins - a bit like that opener in Wolf Hall where we see Cromwell as a young battered boy, only in the latter book Mantel then moves swiftly to the substance of her protagonist's life. Georges-Jacques Danton - with a face ripped apart by a bull at an early age and the lungs of an orator. Robespierre joins the powerful Committee of Public Safety, and it is the members of this committee that become the real leaders of France. Appassionante romanzo storico che, attraverso soprattutto i personaggi di Danton, Desmoulins e Robespierre, apre a una visione come "in presa diretta" degli anni e delle passioni della rivoluzione francese. La pequeña historia que la gran historia esconde novelada con la extraordinaria capacidad de la autora para documentarse y redactar escenas y diálogos verosímiles y apasionantes, donde se sigue el proceso de cómo la más influyente revolución de la Europa occidental se gestó y acabó devorando a sus más famosos hijos en un frenesí sangriento.

There is sexual freedom/decadence, like being best friends with your wife’s lover, which brings enormous subplots and intrigue with it. As I said, the book starts with each of the three main characters’ childhoods and continues through their early careers as lawyers in the early 1780s, and then through the Revolution. We have countless women who for the most part just wait while the men execute their opportunistic and not overtly well thought out plans. I was sometimes quite amazed that Robespierre and Danton were sick and showed some humanity through this, showing they did have a body to take care for. In Mantel’s version of events, Danton had opposed the king’s death at first, but is blackmailed into voting for death after his involvement with French royalists is discovered, but I don’t know how much truth there is in this.