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4.08 AVERAGE
4.08 AVERAGE
A Place of Greater Safety is a well written and entraining novel. I enjoyed it from beginning to end, and I can see myself buying it as a gift for a fan of historical fiction. Almost all of the characters are complicated and sympathetic.
This book is a huge undertaking (and not at all a good poolside read). I like historical fiction, but this is FOR REAL historical fiction. At times, I had to stop reading and Google what was happening so that I could keep up. During the two weeks it took me to read (which is VERY unusual), I also took breaks and read lighter books because the French Revolution is definitely HEAVY. The many different POVs were also daunting. Overall, it's a very interesting book...but it doesn't make me want to read [b:Wolf Hall|6101138|Wolf Hall|Hilary Mantel|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1237697507s/6101138.jpg|6278354] anytime soon.
I really liked this book. Not a perfect novel by a long shot. You can definitely see how Mantel improves as a novelist between this and Wolfhall, since some of the more experimental bits (she plays around a lot with script format and primary source historical documents to tell parts of the story) don't 100 percent work. I also felt like there were definitely parts in the middle where it started to drag.
This being said, this is definitely a case where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It's the kind of book that sticks in your head for weeks after you read it. Mantel is such a talented writer, and I found myself bookmarking sections all over the place so that I could better remember a particularly eloquent passage.
This being said, this is definitely a case where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It's the kind of book that sticks in your head for weeks after you read it. Mantel is such a talented writer, and I found myself bookmarking sections all over the place so that I could better remember a particularly eloquent passage.
Unbelievably fantastic. I'm completely bereft that it's over, so sudden, like the fates of the protagonists after sweating and arguing and hoping and fighting with these characters for so long.
The writing was breathtaking and intense, it was so tightly angled to the characters, despite the wealth of players, I was locked in with them for the entire book. It was painful and sad and heart-rending. It was so free of judgement even as it exposed the worst flaws of the men and women populating it's pages. Every word felt necessary and exact and utterly masterful.
The writing was breathtaking and intense, it was so tightly angled to the characters, despite the wealth of players, I was locked in with them for the entire book. It was painful and sad and heart-rending. It was so free of judgement even as it exposed the worst flaws of the men and women populating it's pages. Every word felt necessary and exact and utterly masterful.
Good book. I had forgotten how slow moving Mantel's books can be. Great for detail but tedious enough to plow through. Found it difficult to finish the book though as knowing the history of the Terror I knew who was about to die which was tough as I was rather attached to them!
Amazingly intricate novel of the French Revolution tracing the rise and fall of Danton, Desmoulins and Robespierre. I'll read more by her.
Re-read while I wait for Wolf Hall, this is an outstanding historical novel of the politics of the French Revolution, coming to you from inside Robespierre and Danton's heads, as they join forces and ultimately come to despise one another's conceptions of liberty and revolution.
Sprawling and absorbing if you like books with that huge epic scope and sense of total immersion into another world, and as always Mantel's prose is winding/obtuse and a bit difficult to get into at first, but once you find the rhythm, it's quite compelling. Wonderful sense of irony/black humor (there's a section where the executioner complains about how rough his working conditions are that is really amusing to me in a delightfully horrible way, and the inclusion of Laclos as a minor character is great for my LIAISONS DANGEREUSES-loving self) and also there is canon queer (hot emotional mess bisexual Camille Desmoulins, one for the ages), though it's mostly all backgrounded, so I didn't shelve it as such.
This is a head-scratcher of a book. I have given it 4 stars because I felt the book see-sawed between 3 and 5. Three stars for being overly long, boggy in the middle (a wide middle) and occasionally anachronistic in the dialog. The dialog. There is a lot of it. Too much quite frequently. I honestly considered quitting the book 60% of the way into it but I chose instead to skim the dialog-rich sections which just didn't seem to add a lot.
I sm very glad I did. The pace picked up and the inexorable grasp of the Terror on the the three protagonists created great literary tension and even suspense despite knowing the outcome. The last quarter of the book was riveting. Hence the five stars for drawing me in and making me care about these fascinating, vexed and conflicted key players in French history and hence the Europe of today.
Finally, if one does not have a fairly strong history knowledge of the Fench revolution and the key players, particularly among the Girondins and Jacobins, I think this would be a very painful and confusing read. An ordeal.
I sm very glad I did. The pace picked up and the inexorable grasp of the Terror on the the three protagonists created great literary tension and even suspense despite knowing the outcome. The last quarter of the book was riveting. Hence the five stars for drawing me in and making me care about these fascinating, vexed and conflicted key players in French history and hence the Europe of today.
Finally, if one does not have a fairly strong history knowledge of the Fench revolution and the key players, particularly among the Girondins and Jacobins, I think this would be a very painful and confusing read. An ordeal.