A Place of Greater Safety

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Simply superb - Rated
One of the best historical novels I have read.

Hilary Mantel tackles a subject of enormous size and converts it to manageable proportions by concentrating on people rather than events.

It's a book I shall return to again and again.

My only complaint is that I wished it was longer...

A tour de force - Rated
Another gripping novel from Hilary Mantell, this book spans the final few decades of the 18th Century in France, describing the fall of the Ancien Regime and the rising tides of revolution through the eyes of three men at the centre of these tumultuous events - Danton, Desmoulins and the infamous Robespierre. Mantell has the great knack of being able to give even the most monstrous of characters a human dimension, and there are few more monstrous than Robespierre, the so-called incorruptible who was finally corrupted by the very pursuit of the vertu that was at the core of his political - and philosophical - beliefs. Mantell creates convincing portrayals of an array of characters, describing scenes of great horror with a sense of detachment that somehow magnifies the revulsion we feel. She skillfully handles an extremely complex period of history, revealing the human heart at the centre these remote events. Danton and Desmoulins are at once sympathetic and flawed, and the woman that loved them are given real voices. A wonderful book.

brilliant! - Rated
This is a gripping yet highly literate tale of the Revolution. It is unusual to find an historical novel with such flair, resonance, wit and sheer style. The characterisations of Desmoulins, Danton and Robespierre are vivid, believable and brilliantly done. Robespierre is not someone one can warm to given prior knowledge of his career, yet even he comes across as someone one can, whilst not understand and relate to, at least find some saving grace of humanity in, and that takes some skill! I have read this three times and it reads as well third time out as first. I can really recommend this as something just a little bit different, a real work of class.

Outstanding - Rated
The characterisation of Danton and Desmoulins is fascinating and thoroughly convincing. I found Robespierre much harder to relate to because of his role in history, and he certainly came across as the individualist he was. It was a valiant effort at him. The entire period of tumult and bloodshed is vivid, believable, well written and stylish. The interplay between characters and lives in the structure of the book as well as its plot makes for a gripping read. Thoroughly recommended.

A compelling story of real and fascinating people - Rated
This is a huge and dynamic novel about three makers of the French Revolution. The two more famous men, Danton and Robespierre, are linked by their mutual friend Camille Desmoulins, whose role in history was to make the speech that inflamed the mob to storm the Bastille. The novel shows us a very complex and chaotic revolution, accelerated by many types of people and careering out of anyone's control. It is far from a simple case of the peasants rising up to guillotine the aristocrats.

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.