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‘Superbly readable…an assured and strange masterpiece.’ Sunday Telegraph
'One of the best English novels of the 20th century.' Diana Athill, The Oldie
‘Hilary Mantel has soaked herself in the history of the period…and a striking picture emerges of the exhilaration, dynamic energy and stark horror of those fearful days.’ Daily Telegraph
‘I cannot think of a historical novel as good as this until one goes back to Marguerite Yourcenar’s “Memoirs of Hadrian”, published forty years ago.’ Evening Standard
‘Marvellous…It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. Hilary Mantel captures it all.’ Time Out
‘Intriguing…She has grasped what made these young revolutionaries – and with them the French Revolution – tick.’ Independent
‘Crafty tensions, twists and high drama…a bravura display of her endlessly inventive, eerily observant style.’ Times Literary Supplement
‘An extraordinary and overwhelming novel…immensely detailed and yet fast-moving…she has set herself to capture the excitement and intellectual fervour of the period. She does it admirably…a tour de force.’ Scotsman
'Riveting…the book overflows with a natural storyteller's energy.' New Yorker
‘Much, much more than a historical novel, this is an addictive study of power, and the price that must be paid for it…a triumph.’ Cosmopolitan
'This is a high-class historical blockbuster.' Red Magazine
‘Hilary Mantel has pulled off the apparently impossible…an ambitious, gripping epic.’ Vogue
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The three main characters are diverse: Danton the bluff orator, the patriot who expects to make a good living out of the revolution; Robespierre the incorruptible, ruled by logic, who believes that the revolution is an essential reform more important than mere individuals, and the magnetic hell-raiser Camille - brilliant, immature, seductive, amoral, driven. Their wives, lovers, friends and enemies swarm through the book creating a riot of events and ideas.
This is wonderful writing with sparkles of genius: Camille's wife imagines the 'semi-demi-half life' of existence without him; a major character dies leaving a book marked with her place, 'And this is it' - it is twinned with her place as a character in this book, the place she got up to.
Hilary Mantel teases fiction out of history, leaving the imaginary indistinguishable from the facts. Both are compelling and thrilling, from the young Camille's subtle humiliation of his host at a dinner party, as a means of seducing his hostess, to Danton's theft of the French crown jewels for diamonds to bribe the enemy to lose a battle.
The story, written in short fragments from various personal points of view, has a form similar to another great historical novel, 'The Man on a Donkey', but this is faster and races through events with a comprehensively modern air. The complexity of the historical events make it an involved narrative with a great many characters, but for the reader who is willing to be swept along, this is a lasting experience. Have two copies - one to dip into again and again, and one to lend to lucky friends.
Mantel's research must have been immense and her eye for detail and character mean that what might be seen as dry history never suffers that fate. It leaps off the page in a kind of glorious technicolour. The characters, bloodthirsty and morally ambivalent though they are, are also portrayed as fascinatingly human and at times sympathetic.
Despite the length, the complexity of the story and the huge cast of characters Mantel achieves the nigh on impossible task of making this book as easy to read as a holiday blockbuster and just as compelling. A tour de force
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