A Place of Greater Safety, the Audio Series
I recently finished listening to a thirteen parts (German) audio play version of Hlary Mantel's novel A Place of Greater Safety. (German title: Brüder.) It was originally broadcast and is now available on Audible. I haven't reread the novel in years, but I found all that made and makes it my favourite among Mantel's books in this version. One of those qualities, btw, also is a reason why the Thomas Cromwell trilogy doesn't work nearly as well for yours truly.
The Cromwell novel's are written tightly and exclusively from Cromwell's pov. We never leave it. A Place of Greater Safety has three main characters (Robespierre, Danton, Desmoulins), and they are the main povs, though by far not the only ones - we also get frequently the povs of the rich supporting cast. (This structure makes it ideal for audio. Whenever the pov changes, the speaker changes as well.) As the three main characters aren't exactly in perfect agreement and have widely diverging opinions of each other the more time passes, there's never the sense that one of them is always in the right, let alone that this character is basically our contemporary in historical clothing. When I read the extra-novel material Hilary Mantel wrote about Robespierre, I have no doubt she loved him as much as Thomas Cromwell, felt as defensive of him, but, and that's crucial, the novel itself - and certainly not the audio play - doesn't privilege his pov over the others, nor does it lose sight of the fact that Robespierre's personal tragedy - the development of an idealistic young man who at the start is 100% sincerely against the death penality, throws up the first time he's in a court room where a death sentence is spoken, favours rights for women and abhors wars into a man who justifies the Terror as the inevitable condition to achieve a perfect state and by condemning his best friend to death kills off what made him human in himself - doesn't absolve him of responsibility. The Cromwell novels go out of their way to avoid any parts of Thomas Cromwell that might feel alienating to a modern reader. Mantel's Cromwell is a champion of reform, but he's not alienatingly religious in the Protestant way, his objections towards the Catholic faith are solidly based on the corrupted state of the church, he's refreshingly non-partisan when it comes to the various Protestant leaders as opposed to following one . He doesn't bring in a law that changes the penalty for male/male sex to a death sentence. He may use psychological horror to trick the occasional character into believing they will be tortured, whereupon they promptly confess, but we certainly don't see him order actual physical torture. And so forth.
Meanwhile, there are no heroes among the main characters of A Place of Greater Safety, no matter how well intentioned some of them start out. All of them have blood on their hands. Danton turns against the Terror eventually, but he has the September murders to account for before that, and he is, as his first wife says in a devastating scene, thoroughly corrupt. Camille Desmoulins who'll end up writing the best pamphlet against the Terror - the one with the Tacitus excerpts used in an incredibly efficient way - absolutely means it when much earlier in his life he promotes lanterne hangings, and he uses his intermittently powerful positions for personal vengeance. I already mentioned Robespierre's arc. And yet the story makes all of them very human, not just interesting in a distant but in a very emotional way. There's no point where you don't want to follow them through the narrative.
Mind you, listening to the audio version, I did realise what escaped me decades ago when I first read the book, that while there are enough sympathetic female characters around (Lucille, Annette and Adele Duplessis, Gabrielle Danton, Louise Roberts), you can make a case the unsympathetic ones are worse treated than the unsympathetic males. Unsympathetic male characters: Saint Just, Hebert. I think that's it. And of them, Saint Just is written as somewhat motivated by jealousy vis a vis Camille, but mainly by ideology, and also, he's scarily efficient at what he does, while Hebert is awful but also doesn't show up in person often, he's just mentioned when necessary. Meanwhile, unsympathetic female characters: Manon Roland (this is significant, snce she's one of the few female politicians), implied to act party out of sexual frustration), Theroigne (whom Camille blames for the death of Suleau, which would weigh less if the narrative didn't paint her as hysterical both before or after, and both Eleonore Duplay (throws herself at Robespierre - who comes across as asexual and incredibly uncomfortable with anything physical, but also not wanting to shame her - at her father's orders, is creepily clinging thereafter) and her younger sister Babette (tries unsuccessfully to seduce Camille, which is all the more remarkable as Camille is, as Danton puts it, "bloody horizontal" and gets around a lot otherwise, and much later when Robespierre needs a last push to turn against Danton provides it by claiming (wrongly) Danton molested her). What I'm trying to get at: unsympathetic female characters sexually unfulfilled, and intentionally or not, that comes across as part of their motivation. Which isn't true for the men.
(An exception just occured to me: Marie Antoinette. Who is an unsympathetic - minor - character in Mantel's novel, but as opposed to, say, Mantel's version of Anne Boleyn, keeps her dignity in adversity. This is actually one of the few things where I have an argument with the audio play, because while Mantel lets her go to her death head held up, so to speak, the audio play has her get into a panic at the last moments, with her breath going faster and faster, and the famous apology to the executioner when she inadvertendly steps on his foot - "pardon, Monsieur, I did not do it intentionally" - spoken in a panicky voice, followed by breathing faster and faster, as I said, and whimpering until the blade of the Guillontine comes down. Mind you: I can also see the argument that in an radio play, you want to bring home how awful getting executed is, that these are human beings dying there, most of whom really don't want to die, and a self possessed last sentence does not achieve this.)
(One more thing about radio!Antoinette: she speaks with an Austrian accent, just as the speaker for Necker uses a Swiss one. Meanwhile, all the French characters speak Hochdeutsch, i.e. the equivalent of BBC English. I've never seen that done before in film or tv or stage versions featuring either character. It mostly worked for me. I mean, since historical Marie Antoinette arrived in France at age 14, I very much doubt she still had an Austrian accent in her 30s, but it keeps reminding listeners of her foreign background which is one of the things held against her, so it has a purpose. With Necker, it fills in some exposition. Otoh, Marat's speaker is accent free, and Marat was Swiss as well, so the audio makers weren't consistent there.)
What was and remains good in both book and play is getting across the situation in France that shows why a Revolution really needed to happen, and the escalating dynamic every step on the way, instead of basically going from the Bastille straight to the Terror, with nothing in between, as is done in many a fictional presentation in the Anglosphere particularly. All the evolving various factions and interests are there, alliances are made and unmade, and Mantel absollutely brings on the delicious soap opera of personal relationships, mostly through Camille Desmoulins, bisexual chaos monger, who starts out romancing the married Annette, then her daughter Lucille, all the while has textual UST with Danton who has UST with Lucille as well, and that's why we get dialogues like this:
Camille: I’m afraid it’s just my mere existence that irks Gabrielle. Imagine, my desperate finacée turns up at her doorstep, and she still thinks I’m trying to inveigle you into bed with me.
Danton: Aren't you?
(This is something I missed in the Cromwell novels: no same sex flirting between male main characters.)
Another thing I admire about the audio version: you can tell the director and actors have thought things through. Camille has a slight stutter, which occasionally intensifies and very rarely, i.e. when he makes historical speeches, disappears; that's both historical and in Mantel's novel, but I don't think any of the films I've seen or any stage performance used it. The audio play does, and thus presents me with the most convincing acted stutter since Derek Jacobi did Claudius. When Danton keeps talking for his and his fellow accuseds lives near the end, the actor's voice gets more more hoarse in each excerpt we hear, thus getting across how many hours of non-stop speaking have passed, even before Fabre urges him to continue because if he stops, they'll never let him talk again. Robespierre is often (physically) sick in his last year of life, and you hear it in his voice as well. And the scriptwriter must have gotten someone to translate an entire speech for him into Latin after writing it, because early on, in both novel and audio, you have the important scene where shortly after young Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette have acceded to the throne, they're supposed to visit the school Louis le Grande where kid Robespierre and Desmoulins are students, and young Robespierre, being one of the best students, has been chosen to give the "hail to our new king and queen" speech. It's raining, young Marie Antoinette is bored, and so they firstly don't get out of the carriage and secondly drive off again long before the speech is finished, while kid Robespierre keeps reciting his long practiced speech. In Latin. (Which, as Camille points out, chances are the Queen did not understand a word of.) Now, Mantel's novel doesn't actually provide samples of the speech, in English or Latin, she just describes kid Robespierre reciting it in the rain. But the audio play actually presents the speech, in Latin, first clearly audible, and then, once the carriage drives away, going on in the background while Camille and the headmaster have a brief dialogue. Now my Latin is very rusty, but from what I could hear, that wasn't some googled Pigdin Latin but an actual plausible speech for an 18th century student to present to a monarch. Go writing team!
The Cromwell novel's are written tightly and exclusively from Cromwell's pov. We never leave it. A Place of Greater Safety has three main characters (Robespierre, Danton, Desmoulins), and they are the main povs, though by far not the only ones - we also get frequently the povs of the rich supporting cast. (This structure makes it ideal for audio. Whenever the pov changes, the speaker changes as well.) As the three main characters aren't exactly in perfect agreement and have widely diverging opinions of each other the more time passes, there's never the sense that one of them is always in the right, let alone that this character is basically our contemporary in historical clothing. When I read the extra-novel material Hilary Mantel wrote about Robespierre, I have no doubt she loved him as much as Thomas Cromwell, felt as defensive of him, but, and that's crucial, the novel itself - and certainly not the audio play - doesn't privilege his pov over the others, nor does it lose sight of the fact that Robespierre's personal tragedy - the development of an idealistic young man who at the start is 100% sincerely against the death penality, throws up the first time he's in a court room where a death sentence is spoken, favours rights for women and abhors wars into a man who justifies the Terror as the inevitable condition to achieve a perfect state and by condemning his best friend to death kills off what made him human in himself - doesn't absolve him of responsibility. The Cromwell novels go out of their way to avoid any parts of Thomas Cromwell that might feel alienating to a modern reader. Mantel's Cromwell is a champion of reform, but he's not alienatingly religious in the Protestant way, his objections towards the Catholic faith are solidly based on the corrupted state of the church, he's refreshingly non-partisan when it comes to the various Protestant leaders as opposed to following one . He doesn't bring in a law that changes the penalty for male/male sex to a death sentence. He may use psychological horror to trick the occasional character into believing they will be tortured, whereupon they promptly confess, but we certainly don't see him order actual physical torture. And so forth.
Meanwhile, there are no heroes among the main characters of A Place of Greater Safety, no matter how well intentioned some of them start out. All of them have blood on their hands. Danton turns against the Terror eventually, but he has the September murders to account for before that, and he is, as his first wife says in a devastating scene, thoroughly corrupt. Camille Desmoulins who'll end up writing the best pamphlet against the Terror - the one with the Tacitus excerpts used in an incredibly efficient way - absolutely means it when much earlier in his life he promotes lanterne hangings, and he uses his intermittently powerful positions for personal vengeance. I already mentioned Robespierre's arc. And yet the story makes all of them very human, not just interesting in a distant but in a very emotional way. There's no point where you don't want to follow them through the narrative.
Mind you, listening to the audio version, I did realise what escaped me decades ago when I first read the book, that while there are enough sympathetic female characters around (Lucille, Annette and Adele Duplessis, Gabrielle Danton, Louise Roberts), you can make a case the unsympathetic ones are worse treated than the unsympathetic males. Unsympathetic male characters: Saint Just, Hebert. I think that's it. And of them, Saint Just is written as somewhat motivated by jealousy vis a vis Camille, but mainly by ideology, and also, he's scarily efficient at what he does, while Hebert is awful but also doesn't show up in person often, he's just mentioned when necessary. Meanwhile, unsympathetic female characters: Manon Roland (this is significant, snce she's one of the few female politicians), implied to act party out of sexual frustration), Theroigne (whom Camille blames for the death of Suleau, which would weigh less if the narrative didn't paint her as hysterical both before or after, and both Eleonore Duplay (throws herself at Robespierre - who comes across as asexual and incredibly uncomfortable with anything physical, but also not wanting to shame her - at her father's orders, is creepily clinging thereafter) and her younger sister Babette (tries unsuccessfully to seduce Camille, which is all the more remarkable as Camille is, as Danton puts it, "bloody horizontal" and gets around a lot otherwise, and much later when Robespierre needs a last push to turn against Danton provides it by claiming (wrongly) Danton molested her). What I'm trying to get at: unsympathetic female characters sexually unfulfilled, and intentionally or not, that comes across as part of their motivation. Which isn't true for the men.
(An exception just occured to me: Marie Antoinette. Who is an unsympathetic - minor - character in Mantel's novel, but as opposed to, say, Mantel's version of Anne Boleyn, keeps her dignity in adversity. This is actually one of the few things where I have an argument with the audio play, because while Mantel lets her go to her death head held up, so to speak, the audio play has her get into a panic at the last moments, with her breath going faster and faster, and the famous apology to the executioner when she inadvertendly steps on his foot - "pardon, Monsieur, I did not do it intentionally" - spoken in a panicky voice, followed by breathing faster and faster, as I said, and whimpering until the blade of the Guillontine comes down. Mind you: I can also see the argument that in an radio play, you want to bring home how awful getting executed is, that these are human beings dying there, most of whom really don't want to die, and a self possessed last sentence does not achieve this.)
(One more thing about radio!Antoinette: she speaks with an Austrian accent, just as the speaker for Necker uses a Swiss one. Meanwhile, all the French characters speak Hochdeutsch, i.e. the equivalent of BBC English. I've never seen that done before in film or tv or stage versions featuring either character. It mostly worked for me. I mean, since historical Marie Antoinette arrived in France at age 14, I very much doubt she still had an Austrian accent in her 30s, but it keeps reminding listeners of her foreign background which is one of the things held against her, so it has a purpose. With Necker, it fills in some exposition. Otoh, Marat's speaker is accent free, and Marat was Swiss as well, so the audio makers weren't consistent there.)
What was and remains good in both book and play is getting across the situation in France that shows why a Revolution really needed to happen, and the escalating dynamic every step on the way, instead of basically going from the Bastille straight to the Terror, with nothing in between, as is done in many a fictional presentation in the Anglosphere particularly. All the evolving various factions and interests are there, alliances are made and unmade, and Mantel absollutely brings on the delicious soap opera of personal relationships, mostly through Camille Desmoulins, bisexual chaos monger, who starts out romancing the married Annette, then her daughter Lucille, all the while has textual UST with Danton who has UST with Lucille as well, and that's why we get dialogues like this:
Camille: I’m afraid it’s just my mere existence that irks Gabrielle. Imagine, my desperate finacée turns up at her doorstep, and she still thinks I’m trying to inveigle you into bed with me.
Danton: Aren't you?
(This is something I missed in the Cromwell novels: no same sex flirting between male main characters.)
Another thing I admire about the audio version: you can tell the director and actors have thought things through. Camille has a slight stutter, which occasionally intensifies and very rarely, i.e. when he makes historical speeches, disappears; that's both historical and in Mantel's novel, but I don't think any of the films I've seen or any stage performance used it. The audio play does, and thus presents me with the most convincing acted stutter since Derek Jacobi did Claudius. When Danton keeps talking for his and his fellow accuseds lives near the end, the actor's voice gets more more hoarse in each excerpt we hear, thus getting across how many hours of non-stop speaking have passed, even before Fabre urges him to continue because if he stops, they'll never let him talk again. Robespierre is often (physically) sick in his last year of life, and you hear it in his voice as well. And the scriptwriter must have gotten someone to translate an entire speech for him into Latin after writing it, because early on, in both novel and audio, you have the important scene where shortly after young Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette have acceded to the throne, they're supposed to visit the school Louis le Grande where kid Robespierre and Desmoulins are students, and young Robespierre, being one of the best students, has been chosen to give the "hail to our new king and queen" speech. It's raining, young Marie Antoinette is bored, and so they firstly don't get out of the carriage and secondly drive off again long before the speech is finished, while kid Robespierre keeps reciting his long practiced speech. In Latin. (Which, as Camille points out, chances are the Queen did not understand a word of.) Now, Mantel's novel doesn't actually provide samples of the speech, in English or Latin, she just describes kid Robespierre reciting it in the rain. But the audio play actually presents the speech, in Latin, first clearly audible, and then, once the carriage drives away, going on in the background while Camille and the headmaster have a brief dialogue. Now my Latin is very rusty, but from what I could hear, that wasn't some googled Pigdin Latin but an actual plausible speech for an 18th century student to present to a monarch. Go writing team!