Book Review: Hilary Mantel's A Place of Greater Safety

A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

History is fiction, said Robespierre. Hilary Mantel makes me believe it.

It is hard to imagine that these are not the exact words Danton, Camille, and Robespierre said to one another, not the exact thoughts that stormed through their brains, not the exact fears and regrets and follies.. And to an extent, this is true - the exhaustive amount of research Mantel must have done to compose this book is an admirable feat in itself. But to take scattered documents, quotes, and historical summaries and transform them into a novel of this caliber is an achievement on another level entirely. Call it the "god mode" of writing ability.

From now on, for the rest of my life, this book will be how I remember these men and women who were a part of the French Revolution. They live again, in Mantel's prose, in a way more vivid than any movie, or any history book, could ever make them live.

So far as I am concerned, *this* is what happened in those years from 1789-1794.

Another review of the book compared it to Dickens' "Tale of Two Cities", saying that "Of course, Dickens did it first," but this book is the 20th century's equivalent. I would say that the comparison is only relevant in subject matter, but aesthetically the comparison seems like a joke when you think of how much more true this book is, both to the historical events of that time period and in how much more well-rounded and persuasive these people are as characters.

Granted, Dickens did not have the access to archives and records that we have now. But his characters are merely approximations of people, signaled often by a defining physical characteristic, habit, or behavior (the cap of the peasant, the knitting of Madame Defarge). Compare this to the wonderful depth of involvement that the women in Mantel's novel have. One is suspicious of what a male author who attempted this same work would have done, when now it seems absurd not to include the love between Camille and Lucile (and her curious sort of attractiveness for others), the silent suffering of Gabrielle, or the bizarre inveigling of the Duplay daughters, among many other smaller characters who yet still have their own depth and vividness (Theroigne, Madame Roland). Having this large cast of characters made the novel quite long, but they were all necessary for us to get a full portrait of the lives of these people as they might have really lived. And we believe it, because of this fullness.

There are gaps, certainly. But the gaps are what we fill in with imagination. What is beautiful about her writing is how cooperative it is with the reader. Some scenes are only a few lines long - others consist entirely of dialogue. Others, we don't hear the speech itself, only the thoughts of the character who is about to give the speech, or the reaction of someone who heard it. This allows the reader to actively participate in the reading, by being 'set off' to the mood of a scene, and allowing our imagination to fill in the rest of the details.

We hear, see, smell, and feel Paris. The book is alike thoughtful and sensual, and along with this atmospheric style we have those hints, thoughts, gut reactions that allow us to piece together a feeling for everything that took place. This makes the book read like a literary novel should (as opposed to genre fiction, which I can read and enjoy, but which this is not). It is not really 'telling a story'. A great novel often does much more than that. It allows us to inhabit the world, and feel every strong emotion or definitive action, at its precise moment of coming into being. This allows us to live in all the fervidness of the revolution - a speech written on the page could not approximate what it must have been like to hear it at the time, so Mantel instead gives us all the emotional cues necessary for us to imagine it for ourselves.

There is more to be said about the novel's amazing analysis of human nature -- I've kept this review so far focusing on style, but I may perhaps expand it later to address the themes of the work more at length.

I dare anyone who gives this book less than five stars to even write a 20 page short story on the revolution. Just try it, and see what a miracle Mantel has here performed.

I am glad that she is now getting recognition for the Henry VIII books, though I wish the media would bring some focus back on this novel, because I am sure it is just as amazing as those for which she is now being popularly recognized.

View all my reviews