Farewell, My Queen
 Chantal Thomas
 (Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
 2003 George Braziller Publisher
 ISBN: 0807615145

In those fateful July days of 1789 the royal world of France is destroyed.

Agathe Laborde, exiled in Vienna, remembers her youth in Versailles were she was reader to the myopic, charismatic Marie Antoinette.

This is the way I like to read history, from the point of view of a nobody caught in the unavoidable currents of destiny & revolution. Here is a lonely, lost woman contemplating her demise, safe & sound in a vital city for which she has no appetite, who can only pine for the fabulous court gone these score years.

Chantal Thomas has gotten inside the skin of this mesmerized servant who watches the brilliant universe of her Queen collapse into chaos as the ancient blue blood society vanishes, leaving the enchanting & predictable machinations of royalty in peril from hungry, maddened Parisians.

Did Marie-Antoinette really say “Let them eat cake”? Follow Agathe Laborde as she goes about her daily court life. Soak up the atmosphere of that extraordinary era. Listen to the roar of the revolutionaries as they approach. Hide in the shadows as the brightness that once was is diminished, & then flee for your life, forever to be banished from the warmth of the center of that world.

Farewell, My Queen is a riveting read, rich with earthy insights into the long lost way of life, into the flavor of what loyalty & royalty can inspire.

This is Chantal Thomas' first novel, & I am very glad to see that Farewell, My Queen has won the Prix Femina of France. She is Director of Research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, & is a specialist in eighteenth century literature. She has authored The Wicked Queen: The Origins of the Myth of Marie-Antoinette, as well as Coping With Freedom: Reflections on Ephemeral Happiness.
(10/12/03)

Rebecca