From Goodreads: The world knows Madame Tussaud as a wax artist extraordinaire . . . but who was this woman who became one of the most famous sculptresses of all time? In these pages, her tumultuous and amazing story comes to life as only Michelle Moran can tell it. The year is 1788, and a revolution is about to begin. Spanning five years, from the budding revolution to the Reign of Terror, Madame Tussaud brings us into the world of an incredible heroine whose talent for wax modeling saved her life and preserved the faces of a vanished kingdom.My face to face book club decided to regroup and go back to the assigned book format versus the freewheeling read what you like version we had been doing. I hosted first and this is the book I chose and ,(whew!), it turned out great. I have loved the other Michelle Moran books I've read so I was feeling pretty confident that it would be interesting and entertaining and we had read another French Revolution book, Abundance, back in our old book club days and everyone liked that one.
Despite the fact that I read quite a bit of historical fiction, I always learn something new and this was no exception. It also never ceases to amaze me how dreadfully unclean everything was back then. Reading about the hangers on at the palace urinating in the halls and going such long periods without bathing leaves me feeling so grateful for the wonders of indoor plumbing. The details of the blood and gore of the French revolution were eye popping. We debated quite a bit about how close or far we are (depending on your opinion) from the people who carried the heads on pikes through the streets during the French revolution. We were pretty split with some ladies thinking that was beyond the pale in this day and age and others thinking they could imagine it happening easily with all the tension in the world today.
This works for the following challenges -
I am trying to reach 100 books this year - I've never done it before although I have come very close, click on the logo to see how I am doing for this year!
Click on the logo to see my progress towards the 2012 A to Z Reading Challenge hosted by Strawberry Splash Reviews.
2 comments:
I really want to read this book. By the way, we lived in France in the 1990s and people urinated all over the place even then.
I've not read any by her...and I've been tempted by this from time to time...but I love french revolutionary historical fiction so I think I will add it to my every growing TBR list!!!
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