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A review by starsal
The Embroidered Book by Kate Heartfield
4.0
"The only thing you can't trade for your heart's desire is your heart."
That quote from Lois McMaster Bujold kept running through my mind as I was reading this book. There, it applied to a man wrestling with how much to sacrifice for the life he wanted. Here it is even more literal. A fictional biography of Marie Antoinette and Maria Carolina of Naples, born sisters and archduchesses of Austria.
The premise is this: Magic exists, and the girls have stumbled on a spell book. They use the spells in it to try to protect the ones they love and make the world a better place. Laudable goals, indeed. However, the spells require sacrifices to work, of the old kind. Not "the blood of a goat" but more along the lines of "a happy memory," "the love you bear for a beloved individual," or even "the hope you bear for the future." This conceit makes it a fascinating lens through which to look at the politics and worldview at the time.
At the same time, it is a powerfully written novel that brings home how young these players on the world stage were, and how very much was expected of them (perfection, poise, politics, progeny) as well as just how twisted and controlled their lives were. These two sisters are best friends, but they have to hang out in secret because their mother believes they're a bad influence on each other. Their marriages are arranged with an eye to politics and their personal happiness and comfort is not considered. Both are shipped off at a shockingly (to us) young age to live with their husbands in their husbands' countries: France for Antonia (who becomes Marie Antoinette) and Naples for Charlotte (who becomes Maria Carolina). After which, their only communication is laborious (and far-from-foolproof) encrypted letters or stilted open letters that are open to interception, interpretation, and intrigue. From then on, each loves the other but is essentially on her own trying to make the best path forward that they can.
Charlotte explains it best when she says she needs to talk to Antonia, to see her actions reflected in Antonia's eyes, to decide what to do. Two people in a relationship need to be together, to talk, in order to save the relationship, or at least keep it the way it was. All relationships need that kind of calibration to keep in sync. Shunted off into separate countries, thrust into different circumstances and coincidences, each woman has to make the best decisions she can, and those decisions put them on opposite sides of a massive philosophical (and cultural) struggle.
It's all fiction, of course, but Heartfield does a phenomenal job of taking massive research about each woman (easily apparent to anyone who has read a couple of their biographies) and melding it into a coherent storyline, consistent with historical facts. It is beautiful and heartbreaking to read.
As the sisters face the challenges of keeping their loved ones safe in a rapidly evolving world, the questions of sacrifice, and who and what it is acceptable to sacrifice and for what ends, come starkly to the fore. The denouement is gracefully and wonderfully done, and the whole book was almost impossible to put down. I highly recommend it this thought-provoking, absorbing book.
That quote from Lois McMaster Bujold kept running through my mind as I was reading this book. There, it applied to a man wrestling with how much to sacrifice for the life he wanted. Here it is even more literal. A fictional biography of Marie Antoinette and Maria Carolina of Naples, born sisters and archduchesses of Austria.
The premise is this: Magic exists, and the girls have stumbled on a spell book. They use the spells in it to try to protect the ones they love and make the world a better place. Laudable goals, indeed. However, the spells require sacrifices to work, of the old kind. Not "the blood of a goat" but more along the lines of "a happy memory," "the love you bear for a beloved individual," or even "the hope you bear for the future." This conceit makes it a fascinating lens through which to look at the politics and worldview at the time.
At the same time, it is a powerfully written novel that brings home how young these players on the world stage were, and how very much was expected of them (perfection, poise, politics, progeny) as well as just how twisted and controlled their lives were. These two sisters are best friends, but they have to hang out in secret because their mother believes they're a bad influence on each other. Their marriages are arranged with an eye to politics and their personal happiness and comfort is not considered. Both are shipped off at a shockingly (to us) young age to live with their husbands in their husbands' countries: France for Antonia (who becomes Marie Antoinette) and Naples for Charlotte (who becomes Maria Carolina). After which, their only communication is laborious (and far-from-foolproof) encrypted letters or stilted open letters that are open to interception, interpretation, and intrigue. From then on, each loves the other but is essentially on her own trying to make the best path forward that they can.
Charlotte explains it best when she says she needs to talk to Antonia, to see her actions reflected in Antonia's eyes, to decide what to do. Two people in a relationship need to be together, to talk, in order to save the relationship, or at least keep it the way it was. All relationships need that kind of calibration to keep in sync. Shunted off into separate countries, thrust into different circumstances and coincidences, each woman has to make the best decisions she can, and those decisions put them on opposite sides of a massive philosophical (and cultural) struggle.
It's all fiction, of course, but Heartfield does a phenomenal job of taking massive research about each woman (easily apparent to anyone who has read a couple of their biographies) and melding it into a coherent storyline, consistent with historical facts. It is beautiful and heartbreaking to read.
As the sisters face the challenges of keeping their loved ones safe in a rapidly evolving world, the questions of sacrifice, and who and what it is acceptable to sacrifice and for what ends, come starkly to the fore. The denouement is gracefully and wonderfully done, and the whole book was almost impossible to put down. I highly recommend it this thought-provoking, absorbing book.