A Place of Greater Safety
13. A Place of Greater Safety - Hilary Mantel, 1992 (first-time reading)
This book is absolutely stunning. Mantel is an incredible writer; her prose is lovely, as is her dialogue (this is a very dialogue-heavy novel, because that's the only way to really communicate the politics of it), but I think my favourite part, what really draws me to read an 876-page novel about the French Revolution when I should be reading any number of other things for my English A-level, is her characterisation. I've read Wolf Hall twice and both times I was captivated by her Thomas Cromwell, but the three lead characters of A Place of Greater Safety are perhaps even richer. The depth and complexity of the characters is very impressive, but they're also realised with such immediacy and given so much of what for want of Mantel's ability to choose words perfectly I will call charm that for days after finishing the book I felt as though they were standing beside me, and I could talk to them, reach out and touch them. I think I was particularly drawn to Robespierre, maybe because the trajectory of his character was so different to those of the others. I knew nothing about the French Revolution before reading A Place of Greater Safety (although, having loved the book so much, I would like to know more), and I hadn't so much as heard of Danton or Desmoulins, but even I knew what happened to Robespierre. I thought it was especially interesting that Mantel chose to leave that trajectory incomplete, though with the reader almost certainly aware of where it's going: 'the sinister geometry of the knife's edge'. She leaves him at the height of his hubris and power-corruption, with his fate inevitable but unspoken. That feeling of quiet dread is what pervades the novel in large part, as perhaps it does any work of historical fiction where the reader knows how many people are going to die, that just about anyone's fall can, always, and will, inevitably, come; it could be summed up in the fact that the title of the novel is revealed near the end to refer to the grave.
This book is absolutely stunning. Mantel is an incredible writer; her prose is lovely, as is her dialogue (this is a very dialogue-heavy novel, because that's the only way to really communicate the politics of it), but I think my favourite part, what really draws me to read an 876-page novel about the French Revolution when I should be reading any number of other things for my English A-level, is her characterisation. I've read Wolf Hall twice and both times I was captivated by her Thomas Cromwell, but the three lead characters of A Place of Greater Safety are perhaps even richer. The depth and complexity of the characters is very impressive, but they're also realised with such immediacy and given so much of what for want of Mantel's ability to choose words perfectly I will call charm that for days after finishing the book I felt as though they were standing beside me, and I could talk to them, reach out and touch them. I think I was particularly drawn to Robespierre, maybe because the trajectory of his character was so different to those of the others. I knew nothing about the French Revolution before reading A Place of Greater Safety (although, having loved the book so much, I would like to know more), and I hadn't so much as heard of Danton or Desmoulins, but even I knew what happened to Robespierre. I thought it was especially interesting that Mantel chose to leave that trajectory incomplete, though with the reader almost certainly aware of where it's going: 'the sinister geometry of the knife's edge'. She leaves him at the height of his hubris and power-corruption, with his fate inevitable but unspoken. That feeling of quiet dread is what pervades the novel in large part, as perhaps it does any work of historical fiction where the reader knows how many people are going to die, that just about anyone's fall can, always, and will, inevitably, come; it could be summed up in the fact that the title of the novel is revealed near the end to refer to the grave.