Customer Reviews

Farewell, My Queen: A Novel

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

 

 

...This is a wonderful, atmospheric book that in my mind really succeeded in giving a sense of the ways that the French Revolution completely took apart the aristocracy. Thomas helps the reader to understand how it must have felt to feel the very marble floors crumbling under your feet, as everything you knew is suddenly gone. It's clear, also, what a house of cards it was -- full of gold, diamonds, and mirrors, to be sure, but a house of cards nevertheless, completely dependent on the support of a vast system of nobles, retainers, servants, etc. etc. I liked the narrator very much, and felt real pity for the king and queen, even as I thought, "You brought it all on yourself." Give "Farewell, My Queen," a try.

Perhaps it's because I read this novel in translation that I did not find it as compelling as others reviewers have. I finished the novel because I wanted to find out how the protagonist made it to Vienna when the Versailles fantasy began to collapse. But it was a slow go. In places, such as where the protagonist recalls in stunning detail a lengthy conversation between two guards about Marie Antoinette, I felt my crdulity strained that, as one of the queen's courtiers, she wasn't either beaten up or raped by these two guys. In fact, maybe it was the sexlessness of this world--with only the hint of a possible lesbian relationship with Gabrielle de Polignac--that made it finally less than riveting.
High points of the novel: the meticulous description of the most minute gradations of rank and the way they constantly underwent change.

I really wanted to like this book but I couldnt get past the meandering inner dialouge of the main character, the strange sequences and the total lack of character development. It was basically one long poem about three days at Versailles at the start of the revolution. It lacks the crisp moving quality of Philippa Gregory's works and depended too much upon the reader's knowledge of French History.

Not recommended.

This is the way I like to read history, from the point of view of a nobody caught in the unavoidable currents of destiny. Chantal Thomas comes by her knowledge honestly having been the Director of Research at the Centre National de le Recherche Scientifique, specializing in 18th literature.

Meet Agathe Laborde who is remembering from her exile in Vienna, those fateful July days of 1789 when, in her youth, she was reader to the myopic, charismatic Marie Antoinette in her fabulous Versailles court.

FAREWELL, MY QUEEN is one of RebeccasReads highly recommended books, rich with earthy insights into & half-glimpsed intrigues of a long lost way of life where adoration of & loyalty to royalty could cost you your life.

"Farewell, My Queen" by Chantal Thomas is a respectable attempt at impressionistic historical fiction in which one is confronted with the loneliness and despair faced by Queen Marie Antoinette at the onset of the French Revolution. My problem with this book is that I first read E. M. Vidal's novel "Trianon" and was struck by the similarities between the two books. One would think that Vidal had been influenced by the historian Chantal Thomas, except that "Trianon" was first published in 1997, several years before "Farewell, My Queen." I guess that when so many novels about Marie Antoinette are being written every year authors are using the same sources and some similarities are to be expected. Instead of the point of view of Madame Vigee-Lebrun, the queen's portrait painter, in "Trianon," we have the point of view of the queen's Reader. In both books the Dauphin is mourned, the King and Queen are reverent at Mass, the queen is reminded of her mother by some tangible token, the life of exiled emigres is described, the queen's presence makes an impact on everyone, she utters the word 'magnanimity,' the Comte d'Artois chases women, and the king is taken with his horses and hunting. Then the similarity ends, for in Thomas' stale rendition, there is no life, no passion, no tears, no faith, no martyrdom, only spiralling despair. Marie-Antoinette heroically says farewell to her dear friend Madame de Polignac, who is charmingly portrayed, but otherwise there is no deep feeling in this book. This disappointed me, since I had come to see the queen as a woman of passion, obsessively devoted to her children, who in "Farewell, My Queen" are but a passing thought. Marie Antoinette lost her life by refusing to leave her husband in his plight, but in this novel, there is no sense of her sacrifice, of her devotion. Nothing but a dream-like state of despair, like a drug-addict lost in an existential malaise. It is a well-written but sad, sleepy book, which many will enjoy borrowing from the library. It did not rip out my heart, however, like "Trianon" did, in passages which burnt the soul. Read this book, but read it before Vidal's books. Don't make the mistake that I made, and experience the same let down.

Agathe-Sidonie Laborde was a reader to Queen Marie-Antoinette of France. Living in exile in Vienna at the age of 65 she recounts in flashback the last days of Versailles before it fell to the revolution in France.

The story is rather like watching a ship sink. A world full of people and customs that are on the brink of extinction and right up to the last minute few of them want to believe that their world is ending. Versailles and its inhabitants and centuries of customs vanish in the space of three days.

In this small novel the author brings to life for a short space the doomed world of the French aristocracy, told through the eyes of someone who lived on the fringes of their world, but still knew its inhabitants well. This is not my favourite historical novel, but it is one that is memorable for its feeling of doom and how well the author seems to have caught the lost world of France before the revolution.

Would I read this book again? At this point, I couldn't give a definite yes. I would recommend you borrow this from the library to read before buying it to see if it suits your tastes in historical novels as in many ways it differs from the "standard" history story.

I'm still struggling to finish. It's good and I understand why it has the slow quality of being frozen in a dream--that must have been what it really felt like. Still, this is the third time I've fallen asleep while reading it.

Even if you aren't familiar with the French Revolution, you are immediately transported into this turbulent time period. The reader is immediately able to empathsize with the main characters. I couldn't put this book down. It is an awesome read!

PS: You will also thoroughly enjoy, "The Lost King of France A True Story of Revolution, Revenge and DNA". This is also an example of literary genius.

Two decades have passed since the momentous events of the final days of the reign of King Louis XVI and his Queen Marie-Antoinette. The Queen's deputy reader, Madam Agathe-Sidonie Laborde, from the safety of her Vienna apartment looks back to the revolutionary fervor that beheaded the monarchy and recalls that final month in the summer of `89. Leading up to the three heated July days, the opulent aristocracy including the king refused to believe the unrest would turn violent. Instead they lived in splendor in the Versailles Palace accompanied by rats, insects, and disease as to be expected when one builds on a swamp. By the time the court accepted reality, it proved too late for most although Madam Laborde, in a desperate Hail Mary escape attempt knowing that anyone associated with the crown was subject to Madam Guillotine, obviously succeeded so that she can share her memories of those days that changed the world forever.

This brilliant work of historical fiction shines quite a fabulous light on mostly Marie Antoinette in her final days, but also the rest of the French Court as the Revolution erupts. The tale provides the most intimate levels of detail that history ignores (a luxurious castle overrun by vermin stunned this reviewer). Madam Laborde's account is so dramatic and specific even to the smallest tidbits that the audience ends up with a terrific work of fiction that provides an insightful reality of the era, so much so that audience will feel they are standing in the dark along side the frightened queen who tried to flee when it was too late. Historical readers including non-fiction fans will treasure this incredible creative masterpiece.

Harriet Klausner

Chantal Thomas' 'Farewell my Queen' takes the form of a confessional memoir, spoken by an old lady in self-imposed exile in Vienna, recounting the change in French monarchy to republic. The pivotal story takes place over the course of three days, giving us a by the hour breakdown of the confusion that surrounding the tumultuous events of July 14 - 16, 1789 as the Bastille fell and Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were forced to attempt to flee Versailles. It is an eloquently written novel that seeks to demonstrate the artificial utopia of a late eighteenth century French court life which floated along in a structured yet almost dreamy manner and was rudely intruded upon by the realities of life over a fateful three days. Whilst it is hard to find sympathy for any of the protagonists, so ably represented by the doeful Madame Laborde, second reader to the Queen, it does show an embellished view of the shocking awakening of those courtiers that drifted through court life in a naive manner where responsibility for actions and their consequences has been entirely removed.
We follow the inexorably obsequious Laborde as she scuttles from room to room not understanding what is happening to shake her gentle world, responding in a child-like fear to the anxious adults. The scene where Madame Laborde is summoned to the Queen's Gilt Chamber to assist in her packing for trip to Metz best epitomises the rapid descent into chaos as the Queen's ladies desperately seek to retain some normality in the absence of hard facts and the maelstrom that is rife rumour.
Eventually, Madame Laborde returns to the darkness of Versailles (an image frequently used to good effect by the author, especially as the Court is dressed in black to mourn the death of the Dauphin) and overhears two soldiers discussing events and beliefs, pandering to the inevitable malicious lies and slander that was felt throughout Paris about their royalty. Yet even though she is appalled by it, there is the tiniest glimmer that change, in all its brutal glory, is also somehow exciting.
The inevitable happens as the court realises that there is fundamental political change and panic sets in. Thomas chooses to personify Panic, dealing with the results of her passing as courtiers flee abandoning children, pets, and servants (Laborde overhears one particular diatribe from a chained up servant who appears to have been the reality behind the poetical pen of Rondon de la Tour). There is poignancy as Princess Gabrielle de Lamboulle ends up leaving her great friend the Queen (there is a departure from historical fact here) on her instructions and we eventually culminate in Laborde's underground departure masquerading as the formidable Diane de Polignac and arrival in Vienna where she has spent the remainder of her life in Prince de Ligne's recreation of the Versailles rituals.
Thomas has written an erudite novel, where the King is portrayed as completely out of touch with his subjects, Marie Antoinette as resolute; both of them as undesirous of their position and shocked as to their sudden fall. In some respects they come across as the King and Queen of Hearts as the more timid Alice realises her Wonderland is breaking apart. The masque fails, the quirky insanity (best portrayed by the star struck Monsieur de Castelneux) crumbles as Versailles awakes from dream to the terrible stench of its reality. You come away from this novel with the strong sense that Chantal Thomas is probably not far off the mark with regard to the humanly emotive response to those three days by the Versailles courtiers and she softly portrays the shattering of an illusion, a utopia that has decay at its very core. This novel is dreamy in its structure, flowing in its prosaic technicality, portraying an endearing fallible heroine and, whilst I confess I very nearly put it down within the first few chapters, it suddenly intruded on the senses in a manner that made it extremely gripping. Worth reading.