Abundance, A Novel of Marie Antoinette by Sena Jeter Naslund
My Rating: 3/5 stars
The story of Marie-Antoinette (told in the first person) starting from when she comes to France and ending with her death.
If I had to describe Abundance with just one word then it would be Average because there is nothing special about it. It's not a bad book, per se, but there is nothing about that would make a reader say "yes, it was worth it to read it".
First problem that I noticed immediately is that the author has, very clearly, read Antonia Fraser's book and Campan's memoir and little facts from them are repeated (often when they have nothing to do with the story) but overall there's nothing unique or original about this story. There's little more than you would find in a history book. A good writer could have made this into a great adventure, a journey into the Versailles of the 18thy century and made Marie-Antoinette's story come alive.
And that's the second problem - there really is no story because there are no characters. Where the author does take her liberties in the characters of the historical persons they seem like dullest, most boring people you would ever meet. The only thing that I can remember about Naslunda's Marie-Antoinette is that she liked flowers, and that's it. Sure towards the end I felt sad about her but that was nothing compared to Campan's memoir where the emotions were much stronger because you actually knew Marie-Antoinette as a person and the tragedy of her life was all the more heavier. But in Naslunda's novel the story is told, you are sad about the facts but you don't really care. There's just nothing from it that sticks to you.
But in the end I gave it 3 stars because it was not the sort of bad that makes reading an uphill struggle and I didn't have to fight an urge to quit it. So in the end it's neither bad nor good, it's nothing really.
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