The listener feels pulled into both time and place. Naslund writes in great detail of the sensual world Marie Antoinette experiences and interprets. It is a voice that can be wearying on the listener but is both vivid and compelling. The author, Naslund, used Marie Antoinette’s letters as the major resource for her novel and as such, the young woman’s voice comes through with clarity and power.

Marie Antoinette, although genuinely eager to be a perfect princess and future Queen, behaves, in many ways, like a typical teenager. However, things become more challenging than anticipated when Louis does not consummate the marriage. Marie Antoinette has been groomed by her mother, the Empress of Austria, to be the perfect wife, obedient, cheerful, beautiful, and eager to bear children. ( From the publisher.This novel is written from the point of view of Marie Antoinette beginning at age 14 when she was married off to the 15-year-old Dauphin, later to become King Louis XVI. With penetrating insight and with wondrous narrative skill, Sena Jeter Naslund offers an intimate, fresh, heartbreaking, and dramatic reimagining of this truly compelling woman that goes far beyond popular myth-and she makes a bygone time of tumultuous change as real to us as the one we are living in now. The young queen, once beloved by the common folk, becomes a target of scorn, cruelty, and hatred as she, the court's nobles, and the rest of the royal family are caught up in the nightmarish violence of a murderous time called 'the Terror.' She shows her new husband nothing but love and encouragement, though he repeatedly fails to consummate their marriage and in so doing is unable to give what she and the people of France desire most: a child and an heir to the throne.ĭeeply disappointed and isolated in her own intimate circle, and apart from the social life of the court, she allows herself to remain ignorant of the country's growing economic and political crises, even as poor harvests, bitter winters, war debts, and poverty precipitate rebellion and revenge.

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.Ĭoming of age in the most public of arenas-eager to be a good wife and strong queen-she warmly embraces her adopted nation and its citizens.

Abundance a novel of marie antoinette