I LOVE FRANCE!

You can share here about any book

or anything cultural you just discovered related to France, Paris, etc.

Please spread the news on Twitter, Facebook, etc !

Feel free to grab my button,

and link your own post through Mister Linky,

at the bottom of this post.

*******

Bitter Greens

This book counts for the following Reading Challenges:

MY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS BOOK

This book left me totally stunned by its structure and quality. It is really a masterpiece, with an amazing blend between historical fiction and a double retelling in fact, of  the fairy tale Rapunzel.
You may know Rapunzel as a work of the Grimm Brothers in 19th century Germany. They actually found their inspiration in the fairy tale Persinette by Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de La Force, which was originally published in France in 1698, being itself a variation on an even older Italian tale. Literary critics are debating how Charlotte-Rose, who did not know Italian despite her vast culture, may have known of this tale.
In Bitter Greens, Kate Forsyth imagines a solution to this enigma, which seems totally plausible.
She puts all this together by telling us about the life of Charlotte-Rose, about her retelling of the tale, and about the original itself. This is brilliantly done, and here are more reasons why I loved it so much.

The different layers of this novel are fascinating and organized in an intricate way that I really enjoyed, even though I admit it could be slightly confusing for readers not used to historical novels using flashbacks:

1. the layer of Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de La Force‘s early  life (1654–1724) . She left her château de Cazeneuve (Gascony, France) at 16 to join the court of King Louis XIV in Versailles
2. Her time at court, coming in the novel through her memories and day dreaming, and these are very nicely introduced
3. Her time at the abbey of Gercy en Brie, after King Louis expelled her from court at age 47, because of her love affairs and also her impious writings
4. Rapunzel as recounted to Charlotte-Rose. The beginning of the tale is set in the 16th century. The main heroine is Margherita, she is prisoner of the witch Selena
5. Then an earlier layer in time, with Selena’s own early life and the life of own grandparents and mother
6. Various short excerpts of poems related to Rapunzel are inserted at the beginning of each section

These are listed here in a chronological order, but the beauty and intricacy of the novel is how they are all intertwined. And of course this is highlighted by the multiple parallels Charlotte-Rose discerns between her own life and Margherita’s.

This novel as just as much the retelling of Rapunzel as it is a historical novel. It is so rich with life as it was under the Sun King:

• Charlotte-Rose was indeed one of many of the king’s mistresses to end up discarded and locked away in a nunnery
• Louis XIV’s terrible character and inflated ego
• his numerous mistresses, including Athénaïs, Maintenon, and even Des Oeillets, that you have heard about if you read the book or my review of The Shadow Queen
• the major issue of battles between Catholics and Protestants, and the horrors of the persecution of the Huguenots, especially after Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes
• the other issue of witchcraft  and fortune-tellers in Paris, also persecuted by the King. There are several passages on La Voisin, see again my review of The Shadow Queen about her
• La Bastille, just as dreadful as The Tower of London
• Molière and his theater troupe, so popular and successful at the time
• before Louis XIV, but here in Margherita’s background: the great art of Italian Renaissance, especially with Tiziano, better known in English as Titian

As for the life in a Benedictine abbey, the author did a great job on the sign language, and there are great scenes for instance when Charlotte receives the habit. A few scenes though earlier in the book, when she entered, were really  shocking, and even though I studied a lot about that milieu, I had seriously never heard of such things.  I think these scenes were totally unnecessary and did little but give a very biased negative view of monastic life. This is my only critic of the book.

During her court life, Charlotte-Rose wrote and published many books about the scandalous secret lives of French nobles. These books are still published and read today.
And it is during her time at the abbey that she rewrote Rapunzel. It was published in 1698 and is one of the first collection of French literary fairy tales.

VERDICT: With a brilliant feat of creativity, Kate Forsyth manages to lead her readers in the world of fairy tales while recreating for them the world of Louis XIV, as a French woman writer of the time experienced it in its glory and horror. Beware, you might want to remain in a locked tower like Rapunzel for the sake of reading this novel undisturbed!

WHAT IS IT ABOUT

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

HAVE YOU READ THIS BOOK YET?
WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE FAIRY TALE RETELLING?
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS  IN A COMMENT PLEASE

***

CLICK ON THE BANNER HERE BELOW
TO READ OTHER REVIEWS,
INTERVIEW,
AND ENTER MORE GIVEAWAYS

AND NOW FOR A CHANCE TO WIN THIS BOOK !
= 1 paperback for a US reader

Click on  the entry-form link here

Entry-Form

 ***

Just a reminder:

please if possible

include the title of the book or topic in your link:

name of your blog (name of the book title or topic):

Thanks!