Review: Ribbons of Scarlet by Kate Quinn

Review: Ribbons of Scarlet by Kate QuinnRibbons of Scarlet: A Novel of the French Revolution's Women by Kate Quinn, Stephanie Dray, Laura Kamoie, E. Knight, Sophie Perinot, Heather Webb, Allison Pataki
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, women's history
Pages: 560
Published by William Morrow Paperbacks on October 1, 2019
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.org
Goodreads

Six bestselling and award-winning authors bring to life a breathtaking epic novel illuminating the hopes, desires, and destinies of princesses and peasants, harlots and wives, fanatics and philosophers—six unforgettable women whose paths cross during one of the most tumultuous and transformative events in history: the French Revolution.

Ribbons of Scarlet is a timely story of the power of women to start a revolution—and change the world.

In late eighteenth-century France, women do not have a place in politics. But as the tide of revolution rises, women from gilded salons to the streets of Paris decide otherwise—upending a world order that has long oppressed them.

Blue-blooded Sophie de Grouchy believes in democracy, education, and equal rights for women, and marries the only man in Paris who agrees. Emboldened to fight the injustices of King Louis XVI, Sophie aims to prove that an educated populace can govern itself--but one of her students, fruit-seller Louise Audu, is hungrier for bread and vengeance than learning. When the Bastille falls and Louise leads a women’s march to Versailles, the monarchy is forced to bend, but not without a fight. The king’s pious sister Princess Elisabeth takes a stand to defend her brother, spirit her family to safety, and restore the old order, even at the risk of her head.

But when fanatics use the newspapers to twist the revolution’s ideals into a new tyranny, even the women who toppled the monarchy are threatened by the guillotine. Putting her faith in the pen, brilliant political wife Manon Roland tries to write a way out of France’s blood-soaked Reign of Terror while pike-bearing Pauline Leon and steely Charlotte Corday embrace violence as the only way to save the nation. With justice corrupted by revenge, all the women must make impossible choices to survive--unless unlikely heroine and courtesan’s daughter Emilie de Sainte-Amaranthe can sway the man who controls France’s fate: the fearsome Robespierre.

My Review:

Women have always fought. We have always lived in the castle. We have always defended the castle, and stormed the castle as well. We have always been there, on the front lines as well as behind the scenes, no matter how much we are written out of the supposedly official histories of “great men and great deeds” that try to pretend that we weren’t in the room where it happened – or on the ramparts defending that room.

The enduring images of the parts that women played in the French Revolution can (unfortunately) be reduced to three, not that there weren’t plenty of women involved, but history as written goes back to those “great men and great deeds” so that women’s contributions can be swept under the carpet – as sweeping was considered an appropriate activity for women.

When we think of women in relation to the French Revolution, the images that have stuck are poor, waifish Cosette from Les Misérables, the over-pampered and over-privileged Queen, Marie Antoinette crying, “Let them eat cake!” and the villainous Madame Defarge from A Tale of Two Cities, knitting and cackling as the guillotine falls.

I’m just realizing that those three women conveniently fall into the “maiden, mother, crone” triptych and wondering if that’s what has made those particular three so memorable. I digress.

Ribbons of Scarlet, fictional though it is, tries to go deeper into the roles that women played during the Revolution. I almost said “both sides” but that implies that the sides were MUCH more clearly defined than they actually were. The Revolution, as the saying went, ate its young.

Instead of straightforwardly proceeding through the story of the French Revolution, or even telling it as a braided novel like The Glass Ocean by “Team W”, Ribbons of Scarlet proceeds from the very beginnings of the Revolution to its exhausted ending at the ascension of Napoleon Bonaparte through narratives that focus on the part that each woman played in her point in history – then she hands the story off to the next woman until it comes full circle back to the original narrator.

Each woman’s story is written by a different author, telling the story of the French Revolution almost as a relay race rather than a single story. Grouchette passes the baton to Louise who in her turn passes it to Elisabeth to Manon to Charlotte to Emilie and, at last, back to Grouchette.

All of these women, including, surprisingly, the revolutionary Louise Audu, were historical figures. Manon and Sophie were prolific authors, and the words and views ascribed to them in the story are documentably their own.

We have always fought. Sometimes with words – and sometimes with pikes.

Escape(ish) Rating: B+: To say that the French Revolution, for all its noble aims, turned out to be a clusterfuck implies a level of organization that doesn’t seem to have actually been present. After reading Ribbons of Scarlet, it feels more like the French Revolution was a goat rope. (Now there’s a term I never thought I’d have a use for, but my word the whole thing was completely fucked.) Reading this book makes me wonder how France managed to get itself organized back into a country – ever. So many histories focus on “great men” and “progress” that the level of sheer savagery gets reduced to something bearable. It probably has to, or history classes would need trigger warnings for this section – not that that’s necessarily a bad thing.

However, just because all of the women were real doesn’t make them all equally interesting, or at least written equally sympathetically. In some ways, Ribbons of Scarlet feels like a short story collection on a single theme, and like all collections some stories work better than others. That being said, Grouchette’s section coming at the beginning was a great way to get into the story. I liked her and I found her perspectives surprisingly easy to identify with.

At the same time, Elizabeth’s extreme piety and unassailable belief in the divine right of kings, as well as Louise’ and Manon’s internal dialog about their own sexuality, while they feel right for their time,  make hard reading in ours.

But they ALL advance the story, it’s just that some heads are more interesting to be inside of than others – whether or not those heads eventually got cut off or not. Most of their fates were tragic in one way or another. That their voices have been lost to history – that’s the real tragedy.

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Review: My Dear Hamilton by Stephanie Dray & Laura Kamoie

Review: My Dear Hamilton by Stephanie Dray & Laura KamoieMy Dear Hamilton: A Novel of Eliza Schuyler Hamilton by Stephanie Dray, Laura Kamoie
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, large print, ebook, audiobook
Pages: 672
Published by William Morrow Paperbacks on April 3, 2018
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.org
Goodreads

From the New York Times bestselling authors of America’s First Daughter comes the epic story of Eliza Schuyler Hamilton—a revolutionary woman who, like her new nation, struggled to define herself in the wake of war, betrayal, and tragedy. Haunting, moving, and beautifully written, Dray and Kamoie used thousands of letters and original sources to tell Eliza’s story as it’s never been told before—not just as the wronged wife at the center of a political sex scandal—but also as a founding mother who shaped an American legacy in her own right.

A general’s daughter…

Coming of age on the perilous frontier of revolutionary New York, Elizabeth Schuyler champions the fight for independence. And when she meets Alexander Hamilton, Washington’s penniless but passionate aide-de-camp, she’s captivated by the young officer’s charisma and brilliance. They fall in love, despite Hamilton’s bastard birth and the uncertainties of war.

A founding father’s wife...

But the union they create—in their marriage and the new nation—is far from perfect. From glittering inaugural balls to bloody street riots, the Hamiltons are at the center of it all—including the political treachery of America’s first sex scandal, which forces Eliza to struggle through heartbreak and betrayal to find forgiveness.

The last surviving light of the Revolution…

When a duel destroys Eliza’s hard-won peace, the grieving widow fights her husband’s enemies to preserve Alexander’s legacy. But long-buried secrets threaten everything Eliza believes about her marriage and her own legacy. Questioning her tireless devotion to the man and country that have broken her heart, she’s left with one last battle—to understand the flawed man she married and the imperfect union he could never have created without her…

My Review:

At the end of the play Hamilton, Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, a widow for 50 years after her husband’s famous duel with Aaron Burr, reflects on his life and hers with the song, “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story.”

The play mostly tells Alexander Hamilton’s story, the man’s story, as American Revolutionary Iconography so often does. 1776, while focusing on a different group of people and a different set of events, also tells its story from the point of view of the men, those “Founding Fathers”, forgetting almost entirely the “Founding Mothers” who stood beside them or waited for them to come back home, even though Abigail Adams explicitly asks her husband John to “Remember the Ladies.”

No one tells Eliza’s story. There is very little written about her, although this was an era of prolific letter writing, a fact that is borne out by the thousands of letters written by Hamilton himself. Few of Eliza’s letter remain, but it is documented that she was a tireless worker after his death, spending her life preserving his legacy, in spite of his betrayals of her if not of his country – even if few of those documents are in her own hand.

Through their pens, however, (word processors, now, of course) two historical fiction writers have attempted to tell the story of Eliza Hamilton as much as possible through her own eyes. And an utterly marvelous story it is.

Escape Rating A: I opened with a reference to the play Hamilton because that is what will bring many readers to this book. In the play, Eliza is very much of a secondary character. But as we see at the end, she had a lot to say, and her lifelong devotion to preserving Alexander Hamilton’s legacy is the reason that there is still so much known about him, and why his achievements endure.

But her story is interesting in its own right. She often was, as another song from the play goes, “In the Room Where It Happened” and she witnessed history as it was being made. As portrayed in this fictionalized biography of her, she was not merely a witness but an informed and opinionated one.

We normally want our fiction to go from small beginnings to big endings. Or from tragedy or ignominy to triumph. At any rate, in fiction we expect the story to go from down to up.

This one can’t. My Dear Hamilton is not merely historical fiction but rather fictionalized history, and we already know how this story ends. Or at least middles, because it middles in tragedy. It begins in triumph, or at least gets there fairly quickly, but Alexander Hamilton’s story is the story of Icarus – he rises too high, and then he doesn’t merely fall – he plummets to the ground in fire. His wife’s story could have ended with his, if not literally, then certainly her history as even the smallest mover and shaker on the world stage.

Part of what makes My Fair Hamilton such a compelling read is that we are following Eliza’s story, and her life does not merely continue, but continues to have its own triumphs and tragedies – and we want to see her rise to meet them.

So this story moves from triumph to tragedy to, if not triumph again, at least reconciliation and understanding. It’s a human journey, and an absolutely marvelous read.

One final note for those who have seen the play, or at least know how the story goes in that re-telling. In the play, Eliza Schuyler Hamilton is portrayed as a bit of a lightweight, and it feels as if her sister Angelica Schuyler was much more Alexander Hamilton’s equal. We are left wondering if perhaps Eliza wasn’t worthy of him.

In My Dear Hamilton, told from Eliza’s perspective, we are left wondering if, after all, Alexander wasn’t worthy of Eliza. He would have been the first to say that he was not. And perhaps he was right.

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Review: America’s First Daughter by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie

Review: America’s First Daughter by Stephanie Dray and Laura KamoieAmerica's First Daughter by Stephanie Dray, Laura Kamoie
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Pages: 624
Published by William Morrow Paperbacks on March 1st 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.org
Goodreads

In a compelling, richly researched novel that draws from thousands of letters and original sources, bestselling authors Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie tell the fascinating, untold story of Thomas Jefferson’s eldest daughter, Martha “Patsy” Jefferson Randolph—a woman who kept the secrets of our most enigmatic founding father and shaped an American legacy.
From her earliest days, Patsy Jefferson knows that though her father loves his family dearly, his devotion to his country runs deeper still. As Thomas Jefferson’s oldest daughter, she becomes his helpmate, protector, and constant companion in the wake of her mother’s death, traveling with him when he becomes American minister to France.
It is in Paris, at the glittering court and among the first tumultuous days of revolution, that fifteen-year-old Patsy learns about her father’s troubling liaison with Sally Hemings, a slave girl her own age. Meanwhile, Patsy has fallen in love—with her father’s protégé William Short, a staunch abolitionist and ambitious diplomat. Torn between love, principles, and the bonds of family, Patsy questions whether she can choose a life as William’s wife and still be a devoted daughter.
Her choice will follow her in the years to come, to Virginia farmland, Monticello, and even the White House. And as scandal, tragedy, and poverty threaten her family, Patsy must decide how much she will sacrifice to protect her father's reputation, in the process defining not just his political legacy, but that of the nation he founded.

My Review:

Before I started reading America’s First Daughter, I looked at the page count and wondered what on Earth I was thinking when I agreed to this tour. Then I started the book and the pages just melted away.

As a story, it also goes surprisingly well with my earlier book this week, The Sisters of Versailles. Not that their stories have much in common, but there’s that thread of “fiction has to make sense, history just has to be true” that applies to both of them.

Patsy Jefferson’s life was extraordinary in so many ways. And just as with the Mailly-Nesle sisters in Versailles, the more amazing that a part of her story is, the more likely it is to be true. And because of that, the parts that are backed up by the documentary record ring with sincerity, where the parts on which history is silent or uncertain seem to ring a bit hollow.

I’ll explain that in a minute or two.

Martha "Patsy" Jefferson Randolph
Martha “Patsy” Jefferson Randolph

But overall, the life of Patsy Jefferson Randolph is an amazing story of someone who was witness to epoch-making events in history, but who still suffered the many trials and tribulations of an all too real life. She’s known in history for being Thomas Jefferson’s daughter, and she is also the person most responsible for the legend that her father became. She was his most constant helpmate throughout his life, and more importantly, she was the person who edited his voluminous papers for publication after his death.

We know him because of her. And through this marvelous piece of historical fiction, we know her because of him.

The story in America’s First Daughter is told through Patsy’s eyes, from one of her earliest memories to after her father’s death. At the beginning of the story, Patsy is a child. The first time we meet her is during the American Revolution, when in 1781 the family was forced to flee Monticello barely ahead of Benedict Arnold’s invasion. So her life from its very beginning is heavily influenced by her father’s politics and service to the Revolution.

While we follow Patsy’s story, we see her grow up. Her perspective begins as a child’s perspective, and with a child’s understanding. But it is tempered with early adult responsibilities – her mother, on her deathbed, makes Patsy promise to take care of her father. It’s a promise that fixes the course of Patsy’s entire life.

In the story, at least, Patsy is the person who keeps her father enough in the world that he resists the siren song of depression after his wife’s death. As Patsy grows up, she gives up the love of her life in order to remain with her father, and then marries badly because of the prospects for remaining near her father and repairing the family fortune. Only half of that hope comes true.

While it seems as if Patsy’s life might be typical of the period, as she sacrifices her own desires to remain close to her father, that closeness also brings her into places and positions that she might not have otherwise seen.

Patsy, whose childhood is marked by the American Revolution, goes to Paris with her father when he becomes the U.S. Minister to France in 1784. In Paris, Patsy witnesses her second revolution, the hopeful beginning of the French Revolution. She sits at her father’s side as he entertains the fathers of that Revolution, including Lafayette. Fortunately for her, she is back in America when it all goes “smash”.

As an adult, Patsy serves as her father’s First Lady in the White House, as Jefferson never remarried. She is part of the Washington City political whirl at the highest level, and having influence as great as Dolley Madison, another activist First Lady.

And through it all, she deals with her own feelings about her father’s shadow family. In France, she is drawn to the abolitionist cause, while at the same time being all too aware that her father is carrying on an affair with a young girl her own age that he owns, and who is the half sister of the wife he loved. Patsy’s feelings about that relationship, the family it creates, and the whole pernicious institution of slavery, shadow her throughout her life.

Because this is Patsy’s story, we see Jefferson from the perspective of a woman who worshipped her father, but at the same time saw the man as he really was – human like the rest of us, with feet of clay up to his knees.

Escape Rating A-: I read most of this in one night. Once I got into it, the pages absolutely fly by.

It does take a bit of getting into. Because we are seeing this story from Patsy’s point of view starting in her childhood, her perspective on people and events while she is a child seems a bit naive and short-sighted. Things make sense from that perspective, but the story becomes much more interesting when the view is through her adult eyes and adult understanding.

Because her father’s relationship with Sally Hemings begins when both girls are around 14 or 15, we also see that relationship initially through Patsy’s limited understanding, and then feel her grow up as she examines her feelings about what that relationship means. She is, as any young woman in her situation would be, jealous of anyone taking a piece of her father’s attention. He is still everything to her. At the same time, the French abhor slavery, and Patsy absorbs that attitude. She can’t help but wonder about Sally’s position in that relationship. Her father has all the power. He owns Sally. Do Sally’s feelings come into anything? Is she coerced by the power imbalance? Or is she just trying to make the best of a situation she has absolutely zero control over? Patsy never knows, because the existence of such shadow families is never discussed. The gap is one that Patsy can’t make herself bridge, and Sally cannot cross.

We also see Jefferson the man in a different light in regards to his daughter. She loves him and wants to please him. While he does everything in his considerable power to make sure that she is, if necessary, guilted to remain at his side, against her own best interests. As a father, Jefferson makes a better politician. He doesn’t want to give up anyone he controls, and will manipulate those people to achieve his ends.

One of the parts of the book that doesn’t quite ring true is Patsy’s relationship with her father’s protege, William Short. Short did exist, but there doesn’t seem to be any documentary evidence that he and Patsy had a relationship other than friends or acquaintances. The early parts of their relationship in the book felt a bit like the authors wanted to insert a romance, both to give Patsy some happiness in her life and to provide a way to illustrate Jefferson’s possessiveness.

Patsy has a difficult life in so many ways, and they are all pretty much documented. While the hardships she faced are alleviated by her service to and with her famous father, that she put him first also seems to have exacerbated many of the troubles she faced. The reader certainly feels the “catch-22” she is caught in.

Patsy finds herself caught, over and over, between opposing forces. She is stuck in the middle between her father and her husband. She is caught between her desire to abolish slavery and the reality that the economy of owning other people is the only thing keeping her family financially afloat for as long as it does. Sally is her aunt, Sally’s children are both her sisters and brothers and her cousins, and she can’t treat them as family or even discuss the situation with anyone. Her husband beats her and their children, and she herself is his property to abuse as he pleases.

To the end of her own life, she is the stalwart protector of her father and his legacy. She saw so much that we will never know, not because the papers didn’t exist, but because she pruned those papers to make sure that his legacy remained untarnished. The life that made her the person who structured his history is fascinating.

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