A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel (1992)

Sadly, I know only bits and pieces of the history of countries other than my own, and almost all I do know I picked up from reading novels. Undoubtedly, much of that information is wrong or incomplete. For example, take the French Revolution: From popular culture I had learned that when Queen Marie Antoinette was told that the people were hungry because they had no bread she said, "Then let them eat cake." As it turns out, that's apocryphal. From high school and college history lessons I previously knew that France had a revolution shortly after the American Revolution, that King Louis the Someteenth and Queen Marie Antoinette had their heads chopped off, that Robespierre was somehow involved, and that a mob stormed the Bastille. The rest of my prior knowledge of that important time in history came from Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities. From that most melodramatic of novels I learned something about why the general populace was so angry at the aristocrats and about how their anger turned into violence and the Reign of Terror. In this novel, Mantel further fills in my knowledge by providing everything I ever wanted to know (and more) about the political maneuverings before and during the Revolution, focusing on the lives of three of the most well known revolutionaries.

The three are Maximilien Robespierre, a thoughtful and self-righteous lawyer who becomes for a time the leader of the revolutionaries; Camille Desmoulins, Robespierre's childhood friend who as a writer of pamphlets and newsletters becomes the voice of the revolution to the populace; and Georges-Jacques Danton, a lawyer with an imposing physique and powerful oratory style who often uses the turmoil of the period as an opportunity to enrich his own wealth. Mantel's account reveals not only what they did (which by all accounts is historically very accurate), but also why they did what they did (which comes, obviously, from her imagination and interpretation of their known histories). All the other characters in this very long and detailed novel are also actual historical personages.

This historical novel would have seemed to me to be too long on information and too short on drama, EXCEPT for the fact that the characters were so well developed that they became real people in my mind and that I was so ignorant about the actual history that I was held in suspense about who would survive and who would fall victim to the Guillotine. I guess that is an example of why sometimes ignorance is bliss. The author examines only the actions and motivations of the leading revolutionaries, neglecting entirely any insight into the dissatisfaction of the people, picturing them instead as an uneducated and bloodthirsty mob highly susceptible to being swayed this way and that by their leaders.

Hilary Mantel is most well known for her historical novels about Thomas Cromwell during the reign of Henry VIII. Both Wolf Hall (reviewed in October, 2011) and its sequel Bringing Up the Bodies (reviewed in January, 2013) won England's prestigious Booker Prize. She is an extraordinarily talented writer and her research is said to be extensive. Judged strictly on an enjoyability scale, this novel falls short of the excitement of A Tale of Two Cities. Judged on historical accuracy and amount of information conveyed, this is at the top of the scale.