Customer Reviews

Betsy and the Emperor

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

It will appeal to young female teens but the historical setting and female perspective will alienate many teens, especially reluctant readers. Also I several issues with the story itself: first it was slow reading until the middle, second even though it is historical fiction I felt that too many "modern" ideas were inserted in Betsy and several of the other characters, some of those issues would not have been dealt with in that matter, especially the frankness of sex and premarital sex, at that, lastly the lack of historical accuracy when dealing with actual events and people always poses an issue with me. I feel that there should be some responsibility and accountability for truth even in fiction; particularly when Betsy attempts to help "Boney" escape even at the cost of another's life, the author even admits that there is no evidence for this.

This new young adult (YA) novel is a historical fantasy based on Napoleon's earliest years on St. Helena. Ms. Rabin has reimagined Napoleon's exile through the eyes of fourteen-year-old Betsy Balcombe, the tomboyish daughter of a British official living on the distant South Atlantic island.

Freshly returned to St. Helena from a boarding school in England, Betsy, while on one of her adventures, sees the arrival of a ship in the island's port of Jamestown. Investigating the commotion -Are pirates raiding the port? -Is the island being invaded? -Betsy discovers that, in a way, there is an invasion.

Napoleon has landed, but as a prisoner of the British; isolated on a tiny, rocky island in the back of beyond and guarded by more than 2000 British troops and a small fleet of warships. Betsy discovers that Napoleon has come to the Balcombe's home, known as The Briars, to live. Betsy and General Bonaparte, as the British insist on calling him, are about to find their lives intersecting. Eventually they will enter into a sort of conspiracy together.

From the first Napoleon plays both the ogre-a role Napoleon, at times, seems to revel in-and the aggrieved ex-Emperor. Betsy, recently released from her own prison of a English boarding school, finds herself, in a sense, in just a bigger prison formed of both the size of the an island that Napoleon once described as "petit" and by the expectations of those around her towards a girl entering into young womanhood. As Betsy says, she was "not at all aspiring to proper young ladyhood."

Betsy, at first, is unimpressed by the former conqueror, but Napoleon, employing the charm he was reported of being capable of, eventually wins Betsy over. Betsy is unimpressed with Napoleon's glory, considering him as a "man who had brought so much misery upon the world. Who never did anything of value, nor gave a thought to anyone but himself." To Betsy, whose fellow students at school had lost fathers and brothers in the wars, Napoleon is little more than a "professional murderer." As Betsy spends more time with the new arrival and learns more about Napoleon her opinion of her fellow prisoner begins to change.

For his part, Napoleon at first teases the teenaged girl, calling her "monsieur" when he catches her riding astride rather than the sidesaddle proper for a young woman. But Napoleon sees Betsy (perhaps as he saw himself around Betsy's age) as someone who is "trapped... like a good actress in a very bad play. You dream [he tells her] of doing great things, but no one expects it of you. Your heart aches to break free-and write your own destiny on the wind... someday they will see what they have missed in you-you will make them see. And they will be sorry." Gradually the rebellious Betsy, whose older sister is one of those who Betsy wants to make sorry, begins to have some grudging admiration for the rebellious general.

Under the influence of the Balcombe family's half-mad, half-French tutor, Huff, Betsy enters into an ambitious conspiracy to free her new friend-unbeknownst to Napoleon. In a way Napoleon's escape from his prison would be an escape of Betsy from her own confinement. "But risk my life," she vows, "I would do again -and again- if it would help set him free."

At the same time Napoleon conspires to assist Betsy in her first tentative steps into adult social life, as Betsy experiences her first crush on a handsome British officer. The arrival of the island's new governor -and Napoleon's new jailer- Hudson Lowe marks the appearance in the plot of a villain who disrupts the lives of both Betsy and Napoleon.

Rabin presents her heroine as a tomboyish girl struggling with her approaching adulthood. Betsy is lively, independent and adventurous. Napoleon is presented as a complicated mixture of playfulness and ruthlessness. He enjoys teasing Betsy and playing games with Betsy's little brothers, but also is involved in a much more serious game with his British captors.

Rabin has not tried to recreate the actual events of Napoleon's captivity, though most of the characters are historical. Rabin admits in the "Source Notes" that she avoided reading the real Betsy Balcombe's memoir of her life on St. Helena before finishing the novel. Instead Rabin has created a historical fantasy of adventure narrated by a teenaged Betsy of her own imagining.

Rabin includes, besides the "Source Notes," a "Geographical Note" on the island of St. Helena and historical notes on the Code Napoléon and on French anthem, La Marseillaise. A contemporary map of St. Helena and portraits of Napoleon and of Betsy as an adult are also included.

Staton Rabin is an author of young adult books, as well as screenwriter, so it is no surprise that Betsy and the Emperor has been option for a movie, with Al Pacino mentioned in the role of Napoleon.

This is a wonderful book. I would recommend it for both adult and young adult readers. Even you don't care a hoot about Napoleon or about history, for that matter, you will swept away by this novel. Betsy is everything you want a 14 year old girl to be, sassy and bright and intuitive and rebellious. Napoleon is, well, Napoleon...a huge historical figure, but wrought here in a way that renders him entirely human (and a fascinating person at that). Staton Rabin takes facts and fiction and blends them up in this novel into a wonderful mix, more true than truth in the end (which is what great fiction does). This is such an interesting novel. It cooks along and is entirely quirky and compelling--just as a "coming of age" story for Betsy. But it is so much more than that. It is about how the grand scale of history is tipped every day by the ordinary, how huge historical figures are, in the end, simply human. It is fast paced, well written, funny, moving, quirky and wild. It is a pleasure to be in Staton Rabin's head and in her heart and in the world that she creates with this book. This is a gem of a novel. I'm giving it to some great young adults that I know (who will eat it up!). I'm also passing it along to some adults that I know will relish it!

I think this is a great book which tells about history in a great and exciting way. Staton Rabin has outdone herself! I can only hope that she will come out with another book as good as this one. Her characters are very interesting and I loved reading about them. Anyone who doesn't like history will like it after they read this amazing book which combines history in a facinating way.

I highly suggest this book, Betsy and the Emperor. It shows that two opposite people can have a strong compassion for each other. Characters have tension between each other that they must overcome, such as being free of the vast mountains and valleys of ST. Helena, or being stuck there with the one you love. After someone important dies Boney doesn't have a very good chance of escaping. Stricter Laws and Rules are then set on what the Emperor Boney can do. Out side her house when she got back from boarding school she recognized a sickly-sweet smell. Betsy has to make tough decisions and she doesn't always make the right choices. Now it is up to you to find out what happens to the Emperor Boney and Betsy. By: Taylor Farley (6th grade)

It sounded like an interesting enough YA book. Betsy Balcombe, a resident of St. Helena, returns home from her London boarding school. St. Helena, you might recognize, was one of the islands Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled too. Betsy arrives home only to have Napoleon arrive several days later, and with his lodgings not yet finished, he is sent to live in her guesthouse. A relationship begins between the two, and while I'm pretty sure the author was trying to create a friendship between Betsey and Napoleon, I found it sort of creepy that Napoleon would want a purely platonic friendship with a fourteen year old. Putting that bit aside, the book moved incredibly slowly, and while I kept expecting things to really pick up, they didn't till the very end. By that point, I just wanted to finish.

I purchased this book at the recommendation of Sonlight Curriculum for my kids to read. I read the book in a couple of evenings and learned a bit about Napolean myself. I found the book one I would recommend more for high school aged girls than any aged boy as it had some details that I wouldn't want my son reading about-things that don't bother girls as much. I wish the author had read Betsey's diary before writing so she could be as accurate as possible in the presentation, but the book did succeed in putting Napolean in an interesting light for young readers.

an okay book but if your looking for a clean book for your teen look somewhere else. some swearing and a little innuendo. if your looking for a historical fiction on napoleon however this is great. i really love napoleon now.

This book makes you see Napoleon Bonaparte as something more than an evil ruler. I couldn't stop reading this book; it was awesome! It's a mix of a romance novel and a history novel. This book's well written.

When Napoleon is captured he is sent to St. Helena. There he stays with the Balcombe family. The family has two girls and two boys. Napoleon gradually becomes friends with the youngest girl, Betsy.

This book has such an emotional ending; I almost cried. I highly recommend this book. It could please anyone especially history lovers.

I have a hard time with a historical novel primarily about a young girl's life when the author emphatically states that he went out of his way to avoid reading her autobiography. How on earth do you write accurately about someone when you won't even listen to their own voice. I realize that cannot take what an autobiography says as gospel, but it should at least be on the must read list for any historical author worth his salt! What's left here is a modern day girl grafted into a historical period to make a trendy YA novel. Young readers deserve better than this.