A powerful study of the French Revolution, this is by Hilary Mantel, the author of the fabulous Wolf Hall trilogy.

A Place of Greater Safety was published in 1992. But that's only half the story. It was actually Mantel's first novel, which she wrote over a period of several years back in the 1970s. By December 1979, it was finished, but she was unable to sell it. So she decided to put it on the back burner, and write a contemporary novel, as "a way to get a publisher". In fact, she wrote four such contemporary novels. And finally, in 1992, her French revolution novel found a publisher. She'd written it when she was 27; by then she was 40...

My audio-version was brilliantly narrated by Jonathan Keeble, who keeps you enthralled for the whole run-time of almost 34 hours. One of the problems with this novel is the vast array of characters, and Keeble's distinctive voicing really is a help in keeping track of them all.

I consumed this book over a period of 20 weeks, in the company of Simon Haisell and his enthusiastic and erudite band of followers. I especially valued their company on this one.

Because it's definitely challenging... It's not that it's not brilliantly written. Mantel only does beautiful prose. But whereas the Wolf Hall trilogy -- remorselessly, relentlessly -- followed events through the eyes of Thomas Cromwell alone, this one inhabits no fewer than three key revolutionary figures (Camille Desmoulins, Georges Danton, and Maximilien Robespierre), while adding in cameos from other characters as well. It can get confusing...

Adding somewhat to the feeling of vertigo were the changes of tense. According to Mantel, "The publication process was horrendous. Basically, the novel was written in the present tense. Someone in the publishing house didn’t want that, so changed it, and I changed it back, and so on, through proofs. The result was that, if you look at the book now, there are paragraphs where two tenses are employed. One day I’m going to straighten it out."

But, of course, those shivering sands of tenses also have their own appropriately disorienting effects. As Lucy Caldwell points out, "the shifting tenses, the shifting pronouns, the blurring of boundaries, the sudden intimacies" all contribute to making you feel you're really living through the revolution.

Which you absolutely do. Revolutions, you realize, are not planned or linear. They make themselves up as they go along; they shoot off at tangents; they explode out of the hands of those who see themselves as their leaders; they -- inevitably and exponentially -- ramp up their violence; and they leave little room for personal loyalties.

Mantel conveys this out-of-control element extraordinarily well. You definitely come away with the feeling that you want to be at least 1,000 miles from the nearest revolution...

Even more surprisingly, though, she manages -- as she did with Wolf Hall -- to inject some humour.

Despite these successes, I (and, I was relieved to hear, many of the group) often felt at sea in the vastness of it all. So Simon Haisell's notes were invaluable.


Where it all started: The injustice of the Three Estates


A revolutionary pamphlet by Abbe Sieyes

***

It's one of Mantel's strengths, however, that you really do start to CARE about these characters -- ill-advised, wrong-headed, stubborn, and often cruel as they are. Rohan Maitzen writes: "It's tribute to Mantel’s peculiar gifts and strategies as a storyteller that she assembles an even less attractive crew here than in Wolf Hall and yet what matters is not how appealing they are but how compelling they are, and how intensely themselves, so that by the final chapter, as the Revolution devours its children, I didn’t care who they were, really, only that they were going to die, after my having known them for so long. Mantel manages their end (known from the novel's beginning because, after all, it is history) without any of the tumbril sentimentality the inevitable Dickens comparisons on the jacket blurb might lead us to anticipate. None of the characters comes across as heroic or noble, but they have such great vitality (even Robespierre, with his tedious incorruptibility), that their deaths felt like great losses -- losses, quite simply, of life, of the energy and lust for life, for words, and for action, that characterized them all."

They start off on the same side, mean well in their different ways, eventually go in different directions, and are swept away by events. How can it not be tragic?


Camille Desmoulins is probably the most electrifying of the characters. Here he is, painted by Joseph Boze


Here's another rendering by Félix-Joseph Barrias


And here's the Desmoulins family (Lucile Desmoulins is a fascinating character in her own right)

***


Corpse-candles: Omens of death

If you see these small bright lights, you'll find yourself following them... Mantel reveals a lot in what she writes about them: "The year now is 1774... Everything that happens now will happen in the light of history. It is not a midday luminary, but a corpse-candle to the intellect; at best, it is a secondhand lunar light, error-breeding, sand-blind and parched."

The reference imparts a frisson. We know from the beginning that this story will not end well for our key characters. The title's "place of greater safety" turns out to be the grave...

But the nod to corpse-candles also illustrates Mantel's understanding of the relations between history and fiction. She writes in her introductory Author's Note: "This is a novel about the French Revolution. Almost all the characters in it are real people and it is closely tied to historical facts -- as far as those facts are agreed, which isn't really very far... This is not, either, an impartial account. I have tried to see the world as my people saw it, and they had their own prejudices and opinions... I purvey my own version of events, but facts change according to your viewpoint... I am not trying to persuade my reader to view events in a particular way, or to draw any particular lessons from them. I have tried to write a novel that gives the reader scope to change opinions, change sympathies: a book that one can think and live inside. The reader may ask how to tell fact from fiction. A rough guide: anything that seems particularly unlikely is probably true."

(There's an interesting debate about the historical novel and its relation to historiography here.)

What is undeniable is that we really do meet some fascinating people:


Mme Genlis is the mistress of Louis Philippe II, the Duke of Orleans, who put himself forward as what Haisell calls "an enlightened alternative" to the benighted Louis XVI. Genlis (one of a host of fascinating women in this book) is a writer, but not a good one: "Felicite is a woman of sweet and iron wilfulnesss, and she writes books. There are few acres in the field of human knowledge that she has not ploughed with her harrowing pedantry." Ooooh, none of us wants to be on the wrong side of a tongue like Mantel's...


Axel von Fersen, painted by Carl Frederik von Breda. He was a Swedish count, and his intimacy with Marie Antoinette (we're not totally sure how far it went) caused scandal at the court. He tried to help the royal family escape, but the "flight to Varennes" ended in disaster

Given only a "tangential, peculiar role" in the book, according to Mantel, is Jean-Paul Marat. She felt that including his extensive revolutionary career would unbalance the book, so she allows him guest appearances only. She says in that introductory Note that she hoped to write about him at a later date, adding -- intriguingly -- that "any such novel would subvert the view of history which I offer here". She admits that she had many arguments with herself "about what history really is", but contends: "You must state a case, I think, before you can plead against it." How tragic that she never wrote her Marat book...


Marat's infamous death, painted by Jacques-Louis David

For more on the characters and their role, see this excellent summary. Or -- even better -- see Simon Haisell's Substack (he keeps previous posts open for subscribers).

In sum, this is a flawed but brilliant book; it's tough but rewarding. I rarely re-read, but this I would return to. It's too rich and complex to take in on one pass.