So I know that this is almost the end of the year and I am just getting around to actually participating in this challenge. This is my first entry in the Truth in Fiction Challenge (hosted by Fig & Thistle).
Book Pair:Days of Splendor, Days of Sorrow by Juliet Grey (Fiction)
Marie Therese: Child of Terror by Susan Nagel (Non-Fiction)
So instead of doing a typical review of these two – because I already did that (linked above)– I wanted to offer come comparisons and what made me link these two books together.
Days of Splendor, Days of Sorrow focuses on the period of Marie Antoinette’s life surrounding the French Revolution. Her daughter, Marie Therese, plays a very, very small background role in this novel. I have had an interest in Marie Therese because in every novel I have read about her she is always a young girl living through the French Revolution and is frequently portrayed as sort of stuck up. I knew that there had to be more to this girl and when I stumbled across Marie Therese: Child of Terror I knew I had to read it.
The Marie Therese that is seen in Child of Terror is nothing like the Marie Therese seen in novels – and there wasn’t much of her in Days of Splendor, Days of Sorrow to really pass a judgment on her character there. This Marie Therese grows into her own – a passionate woman who believes in France, forgives the people for the tragedy they caused her personally, and wants to do what is best for the France of the future. She did have her moments of quiet and brooding – however I would honestly expect that after all she went through.
At the same time, in the early portion of Child of Terror we see Marie Antoinette in the earlier years leading up to the Revolution – and she was portrayed in very much a similar light as in Days of Splendor – fun loving however not an airhead as portrayed in other novels.
I appreciated getting to know this young woman in her own right beyond as a background figure in her parent’s story.
Copyright © 2012 by The Maiden’s Court
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