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City of Darkness, City of Light Paperback – August 12, 1997

4.2 out of 5 stars 108

"FAST-PACED . . . PIERCY BREATHES LIFE INTO THE ACTUAL HISTORICAL FIGURES WHO SHAPED THE REVOLUTION."
--San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle

In her most splendid, thought-provoking novel yet, Marge Piercy brings to vibrant life three women who play prominent roles in the tumultuous, bloody French Revolution--as well as their more famous male counterparts.

Defiantly independent Claire Lacombe tests her theory: if men can make things happen, perhaps women can too. . . . Manon Philipon finds she has a talent for politics--albeit as the ghostwriter of her husband's speeches. . . . And Pauline Léon knows one thing for certain: the women must apply the pressure or their male colleagues will let them starve. While illuminating the lives of Robespierre, Danton, and Condorcet, Piercy also opens to us the minds and hearts of women who change their world, live their ideals--and are prepared to die for them.

"MASTERFUL . . . PIERCY BRINGS THE BLOOD AND GUTS, THE IDEAS AND PASSIONS, OF THE REVOLUTION TO LIFE."
--The Women's Review of Books

"PIERCY'S STORYTELLING POWERS CAPTURE THE TURBULENCE AND EXCITEMENT OF [THIS] LIBERATING ERA."
--The Boston Herald

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From the Inside Flap

"FAST-PACED . . . PIERCY BREATHES LIFE INTO THE ACTUAL HISTORICAL FIGURES WHO SHAPED THE REVOLUTION."
--San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle

In her most splendid, thought-provoking novel yet, Marge Piercy brings to vibrant life three women who play prominent roles in the tumultuous, bloody French Revolution--as well as their more famous male counterparts.

Defiantly independent Claire Lacombe tests her theory: if men can make things happen, perhaps women can too. . . . Manon Philipon finds she has a talent for politics--albeit as the ghostwriter of her husband's speeches. . . . And Pauline Léon knows one thing for certain: the women must apply the pressure or their male colleagues will let them starve. While illuminating the lives of Robespierre, Danton, and Condorcet, Piercy also opens to us the minds and hearts of women who change their world, live their ideals--and are prepared to die for them.

"MASTERFUL . . . PIERCY BRINGS THE BLOOD AND GUTS, THE IDEAS AND PASSIONS, OF THE REVOLUTION TO LIFE."
--The Women's Review of Books

"PIERCY'S STORYTELLING POWERS CAPTURE THE TURBULENCE AND EXCITEMENT OF [THIS] LIBERATING ERA."
--The Boston Herald

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Ballantine Books; Reprint edition (August 12, 1997)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 496 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0449912752
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0449912751
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.3 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 1 x 8.5 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.2 out of 5 stars 108

About the author

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Marge Piercy
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Marge Piercy has written seventeen novels including the New York Times bestseller Gone to Soldiers, the national bestsellers Braided Lives and The Longings of Women, and the classic Woman on the Edge of Time, as well as He, She and It and Sex Wars; nineteen volumes of poetry including The Hunger Moon: New and Selected Poems 1980–2010, The Crooked Inheritance, and Made in Detroit; and the critically acclaimed memoir Sleeping with Cats. Born in center city Detroit, educated at the University of Michigan and Northwestern, and the recipient of four honorary doctorates, Piercy is active in antiwar, feminist, and environmental causes.

Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5 stars
4.2 out of 5
108 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on August 5, 2017
City of Darkness, City of Light is a novel about the French Revolution. In it, Marge Piercy follows the lives of six people who were movers and shakers in the Revolution: three men – Georges Danton, Maximilian Robespierre, and Marie Jean Nicholas Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet – and three women – Pauline Leon, Claire Lacombe, and Manon Roland.

Danton and Robespierre were both lawyers before the Revolution and worked their way into leadership positions in the various legislative bodies that came into being during the years of the Revolution. Both were at one time considered the most powerful man in the country, and both ended at the guillotine.

The Marquis de Condorcet was primarily a scientist and mathematician. He also somehow got into some of the legislative bodies of the revolution and wrote a complicated Constitution for France which seems not to have been adopted. He seems not to have been a bad sort. Apparently, there is controversy over how he died. In this book, he takes poison as he is about to be caught while running from his political enemies. Other sources indicate that he too went to the guillotine.

Manon Roland was the wife of a provincial bureaucrat. During the Revolution, he was elected to several positions in the government in Paris and
Manon went with him. She was an intelligent woman and a good wife, working behind the scenes to further his career. She wrote his speeches and wrote articles for one of the newspapers. She also ran a politically oriented salon where ideas were discussed, and movements toward power were begun. She too ended her life on the guillotine.

Only Claire Lacombe, an actress who played many roles glorifying moments in the Revolution for various theatrical entities, and Pauline Leon, who was a chocolate maker in Paris and who was prominent in the early bread riots, the attack on the Bastille, and other movements of the people in the early days, managed to survive the Revolution and the Reign of Terror. Both of them were arrested and spent long stretches in various prisons, but history moved on before they could be executed, and they were eventually released and returned to normal lives.

This is almost the first book I have read that gave much more than a thumbnail sketch of the French Revolution and what it was about (besides getting rid of the aristocracy). I confess I am still somewhat confused as to the relationships between the Committee, the Convention, and the Commune, but I now have a somewhat clearer picture of some of the people involved.
3 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on August 8, 2016
Not my favorite novel of Marge Piercy, but a good look at the misery surrounding the French Revolution. No one seems to have been more degraded than the French peasantry. No aristocracy was more frivolous and idiotic than the Court of Versailles. The characters in the novel are fleshed out with real lives--how did they earn their bread? How did they survive? Paris seemed a horrible grimy place of death, throwing the reforms of Hausmann later on in a new light. But during the French Revolution, Paris was only great if you were rich, rich, rich.

A fascinating look from a rather left-leaning but always enormously impassioned author. Her outrage is palpable. Good reading.
2 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on April 5, 2021
Better World Books rocks! My hardcover copy of decades old “City of Darkness, City of Light” by Marge Piercy arrived in great condition. Pages only slightly yellowed, otherwise like new! Anyone interested in the history of France or in traveling there would enjoy this wonderfully well researched historical fiction. The facts are accurate and the history is brought alive in the characters Piercy created to tell the story. My third copy since it was first released.
Reviewed in the United States on June 29, 2014
I've been ready Marge Piercy for almost 40 years. I like her style and her character development. It's hard to take real people from history and give them a voice. Marge Piercy does a great job. The book was overly long and I got lost a few times in the maze of characters of I would have given it five starts. Few people can write with the skill of Marge Piercy.
4 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on May 24, 2010
A very incise recreation of the French Revolution. The life on Danton, Robespierre and the others jump off the page. I thought that Ms. Piercy captured the feel of the epoch and the times and filled in what the Revolutionaries might have said. I felt like I was a part of the action and had a whole new insight into the time.
If you've ever wondered what being alive during the Terror and the birth of the new republic, the insanity and passion then this is the book for you.
Reviewed in the United States on August 28, 2013
I loved it. The amount of knowledge, the real feeling you got from different characters, the tie-ins, this was entertaining read and helped me immensly with my own project
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Reviewed in the United States on September 5, 2016
I've read and enjoyed several Marge Piercy books. City of Darkness, City of Light is not one of them. If it weren't for my lifelong pledge to myself that I'd finish every book I started, I would have put this book aside long before the end. Which, I suppose, would have been a loss since it wasn't until quite a way past the midway point that the book became interesting, perhaps because it was, by that point, a retelling of historically well-known events of the French Revolution. The problem for me, I believe, is the book's structure. Rather than allowing the narrative to unfold in straightforward, chronological order, Piercy chooses to devote each chapter to one of six or seven main characters, each character instrumental in some way in the Revolution. So one has read about, say, Ropespierre, in a short chapter and then must wait another five or six chapters before getting back to Ropespierre. Moreover, each chapter of each character's story is chock full of names names names - of people, organizations, events, political ideologies, etc. I had a difficult time keeping track of it all: who's who, what's what, where they are at any given moment. My interest frequently flagged.
8 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on December 18, 2014
I loved this book the first time I read it. This time, while I enjoyed it, it seemed a bit less compelling. However, it is a fascinating story of the French Revolution and I would recommend it to Marge Piercy fans and history buffs.
2 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Kenneth Koprich
5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent novel.
Reviewed in Canada on December 11, 2019
I quite enjoyed the novel. It is historical fiction of course. The local colour for 18th century France is well portrayed. I have read the history of life in France leading up to the Revolution, but never as a story following people in their daily lives. Quite interesting and informative.
processqueen
5.0 out of 5 stars humanstory
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 21, 2011
marge piercy's writing is wonderful, at its best, deeply political and thought provoking. for the first time i actually understand the separate waves of the french revolution, and why each wave felt so violent towards the previous, who had freed themselves but not the masses. each narrator character is written distinctively and sympathetically, with well researched detail, but also in a way that brings the political viewpoints into focus and makes them memorable. for me this joins my top 5 of piercy's work: woman on the edge of time;small changes;vida;he,she and it (body of glass) and gone to soldiers. a great writer shedding light on researched and imagined activists of the past.
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Kate Hopkins
4.0 out of 5 stars Compulsively Readable Historical Fiction
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 7, 2013
I've been fascinated by the French Revolution since school, and so was very interested to read this large-scale novel by Marge Piercy (chiefly known for her feminist fiction). Piercy tells the story of the French Revolution from the childhoods of the key players (Robespierre, Danton etc) to the end of the Terror, with a concluding flash-forward to 1812, showing events not only seen through the eyes of some of the more famous figures (Danton, Robespierre, Madame Manon Roland the liberal Girondist, the liberal academic Nicolas de Condorcet) but also through the eyes of two women less well known but who played a key role in events: Pauline Leon, a chocolatier who organized women to march in protest at food prices, and Claire Lacombe, a feminist actress who fought for women's rights. Their stories feature many other marvellous characters, among whom I particularly liked Robespierre's beloved Eleanore, Nicolas's feminist wife Sophie, Claire's best friend Victoire and her Jewish lover Mendes Herrera and Danton's young, devoted wife Louise.

Piercy wrote this novel partly from the wholly admirable belief that Americans needed to know what can happen in a society where the rich get ever richer and more selfish and the poor poorer. Her socialism can colour the narrative slightly at times. For example, though it's marvellous to have a portrayal of Robespierre where he isn't simply a monster, I doubt he was quite as noble as the 'Max' (everyone in the book is referred to by Christian names, quite an interesting idea) of Piercy's novel. Nor do I think Marie Antoinette was quite so simply villainous, the Desmoulins so silly (Lucile by all accounts wasn't as frivolous as Piercy portrays her, and Camille Desmoulins had greater nobility, I think, than the Desmoulins in this version) or the workers universally so heroic. At times too Piercy doesn't quite manage to make some of the characters as richly complex as she intends. Manon Roland, who in life was much admired while alive and after her death, comes across as rather too self-involved and cold (though her death scene is magnificent) while Pauline Leon, after promising beginnings, becomes chillingly naive, rejoicing in the bloodthirsty executions of the rich, and in the end metamorphosing into a quiet little housewife happy to be dominated by her soldier husband. I suspected I should have found more to like about these two women than I did. However, some of the descriptions of Robespierre (particularly his life away from politics, and his love of Eleanore and of animals) were very moving, and Piercy's Georges Danton, Nicolas Condorcet and Claire Lacombe were all magnificent creations, and very sympathetic. The dialogue, despite the odd clunky Americanism ('Henri was just an ordinary guy' and that sort of thing) flowed convincingly, and there were some fine descriptions of Paris. The book was also very well researched, and though a big tome at 600 pages never felt too long. Although I suspect that Dickens in 'A Tale of Two Cities' and Hilary Mantel in 'A Place of Greater Safety' may have given a slightly less biased view of the Revolution, I found this on the whole a magnificent read, and very absorbing - and it's certainly made me want to read more about the French Revolution, and to read Marge Piercy's other books.
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