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A Novel of Marie Antoinette
William Morrow
October 2006
On Sale: October 1, 2006
Featuring: Marie Antoinette
560 pages
ISBN: 0060825391
EAN: 9780060825393
Hardcover
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Fiction | Literature and Fiction | Historical
"Like everyone, I am born naked." With this opening line of Naslund's compelling new novel, a
very human Marie Antoinette invites readers to live her
story as she herself experiences it. From the lush gardens
of Versailles to the lights and gaiety of Paris, the verdant
countryside of France, and finally the stark and terrifying
isolation of a prison cell, the young queen's life is
joyful, poignant, and harrowing by turns. As her world of
unprecedented royal splendor crumbles, the charming Marie
Antoinette matures into a heroine of inspiring stature, one
whose nobility arises not from the circumstance of her birth
but from her courageous spirit. Marie Antoinette was a child of fourteen when her mother,
the Empress of Austria, arranged for her to leave her family
and her country to become the wife of the fifteen-year-old
Dauphin, the future King of France. Coming of age in the
most public of arenas, the young queen embraces her new
family and the French people, and she is embraced in return.
Eager to be a good wife and strong queen, she shows her new
husband nothing but love and encouragement, though he
repeatedly fails to consummate their marriage and in doing
so, fails to give her the thing she-;and the people of
France-;desire most: a child and an heir to the throne. Deeply disappointed and isolated in her own intimate circle
apart from the social life of the court, the queen allows
herself to remain ignorant of the country's growing economic
and political crises. She entrusts her soul to her women
friends, her music teacher, her hairdresser, the ambassador
from Austria, and a certain Swedish count so handsome that
admirers label him "the Picture." When her innocent and
well-chaperoned pilgrimage to watch the sun rise is
viciously misrepresented in satiric pamphlets as a drunken
orgy, the people begin to turn against her. Poor harvests,
bitter winters, war debts, and poverty precipitate rebellion
and revenge as the royal family and many nobles are caught
up in a murderous time known as "the Terror." With penetrant insight into new historical scholarship and
with wondrous narrative skill, Naslund offers an intimate,
fresh, and dramatic re-creation of this compelling woman
that goes beyond popular myth. Abundance reveals a
compassionate and spontaneous Marie Antoinette who rejected
the formality and rigid protocol of the court; an enchanting
and tenderhearted outsider who was loved by her adopted
homeland and people until she became the target of
revolutionary cruelty and violence; a dethroned queen whose
depth of character sustained her in even the worst of times. Once again, Sena Jeter Naslund has shed new light on an
important moment of historical change and made that time as
real to us as the one we are living now. Exquisitely
detailed, beautifully written, heartbreaking and powerful,
Abundance is a novel that is impossible to put down.
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