Maria Antonietta: I Segreti Di Una Regina (2012) - Plot & Excerpts
I had a mildly difficult time choosing between the 2 and 3 star ratings for this novel, but I'll go with goodreads' instructions as this second installation of the Marie Antoinnete series was indeed "just okay." My main criticism of this book (other than it suffering from the inevitable middle book syndrome) was that it covered too much time too quickly. The book ambitiously spans the time frame from when MA becomes queen to the storming of the Bastille. Handled in a more delicate fashion, this time frame might have turned out better, but the author really loses MA's voice and perspective in the shifting of the years and the inclusion of a lot of political detail. Was MA really so politically astute? I'd been under the impression that she was oblivious to France's economic and social predicament, but my knowledge of her was quite shallow before reading this book.At the end of Becoming Marie Antoinette, an understanding and friendship had formed between MA and Louis XVI, but at the beginning of Days of Splendor, Days of Sorrow that intimacy is completely gone. MA cannot stand her husband and is completely bored of him. So quickly? I thought she'd come to love him in some way or another -- and at least respect him. We all know Louis was rather a lump, but he'd been so nicely characterized in the previous novel and made a little more sympathetic. Nope. MA wants little to do with him and instead transforms into the pleasure-seeking hedonist for which she earns her notorious reputation, and the jump was rather jarring. There was no subtle development for how the prudish dauphine became so obsessed with games, gambling, and loads of name-dropped but undeveloped friends. (Her love of fashion was at least developed...) Grey proposes her plausible explanation for MA's behavior in her afterword, but I didn't find it developed well enough within the novel itself. For the nearly 20 years that the novel does span, little of MA is developed other than her maturity shift to focus on her children more as she aged. Even so, MA's voice was rather lost in the turnover of the years.Even still, I will read the last novel, which only covers four years so hopefully the problems in Days of Splendor, Days of Sorrow will be eradicated. ... Though I am sure MA will be crying the whole novel. I wanted this book to read more like a novel and less like a history book but it failed in that respect. I found the long stretches of one name after another very tiresome. Marie Antoinette was a selfish, immature baby, just like all the upper crust French people of that time. So self absorbed, I found her irritating to just read about. Who knows what would have come out of my mouth had I actually met her?
What do You think about Maria Antonietta: I Segreti Di Una Regina (2012)?
I enjoyed this just as much as the first book. I am fascinated by Marie Antoinette now.
—faith
