[.ca] Marie Antoinette (ISBN 0385257759)

From Amazon.com:
In the past, Antonia Fraser's bestselling histories and biographies have focused on people and events in her native England, from Mary Queen of Scots to Faith and Treason: The Story of the Gunpowder Plot. Now she crosses the Channel to limn the life of France's unhappiest queen, bringing along her gift for fluent storytelling, vivid characterization, and evocative historical background. Marie Antoinette (1755-93) emerges in Fraser's sympathetic portrait as a goodhearted girl woefully undereducated and poorly prepared for the dynastic political intrigues into which she was thrust at age 14, when her mother, Empress Maria Theresa, married her off to the future Louis XVI to further Austria's interests in France. Far from being the licentious monster later depicted by the radicals who sent her to the guillotine at the height of the French Revolution, young Marie Antoinette was quite prudish, as well as thoroughly humiliated by her husband's widely known failure to have complete intercourse with her for seven long years (the gory details were reported to any number of concerned royal parties, including her mother and brother). She compensated by spending lavishly on clothes and palaces, but Fraser points out that this hardly made her unique among 18th-century royalty, and in any case the causes of the Revolution went far beyond one woman's frivolities. The moving final chapters show Marie Antoinette gaining in dignity and courage as the Revolution stripped her of everything, subjected her to horrific brutalities (a mob paraded the head of her closest female friend on a pike below her window), and eventually took her life. Fraser makes no attempt to hide the queen's shortcomings, in particular her poor political skills, but focuses on her personal warmth and noble bearing during her final ordeal. It's another fine piece of popular historical biography to add to Fraser's already impressive bibliography. --Wendy Smith

Golden:
I loved this book! This book was very entertaining to read about the last years of the court of Versailles. I learned so much about a very misunderstood Marie Antoinette who only lived to please other people, love her children and only want the best for the country she lived in. This book went into so much detail about her friends, personal tastes and family that it is hard to believe that she became such a hated figure and scapegoat for France's political troubles at the time leading up to the Revolution and beyond. Reading this book made me a little obsessed into knowing more about her ladies-in-waiting, and fate of her children to name a few. Antonia Fraser has done a wonderful job in research here. The ending brought me to tears. It made me feel like I wanted to rescue Antoinette from the guillotine on her last day alive. If anyone out there wants a good read on a Queen like her, you must read this book! Thank you Antonia Fraser!

Whet's the Appetite for More Things French:
Antonia Fraser's Marie Antoinette was a deeply affecting entre into French history. I somehow managed to elude reading works of this bloody overthrow- the rule of the mob and its atrocities, were avoided unless they were somehow part of literature and the occassional film. The characters also were repellent, vile Robbespierre, Marquis de Sade, and the unfathomable treatment of innocents. Napoleon too, seemed like a man's study, too much war, tactics, battles, generals- demanded some kind of interest that was well beyond me. However, Marie Antoinette, A Journey, reversed all previous prejudices and ignited a wave of further reading, not unlike a hunger. Alas, no other books had the seductive charm of this, but even that did not diminish my drive to know more. The incestuous rulers of Europe were, as everyone knows, breeding themselves into obsolescense. They assumed their various family lines fortified through marriage and sustained by vast wealth would ensure monarchical government across the continent and the span of the world. Their largely compromised viewpoint and egregious lack of training elicited fear and subordination in their subjects, as indeed it inspired contempt. Entering into a foreign land as the princess and queen to be, Marie Antoinette, was illequipped and destined to be the source of vicious gossip and the foreign scapegoat for tyranny and exploitation suffered by the as they say, common man. She was a pampered and overly protected child when she arrived in her new country, and was both ignorant and reckless in her spending and arrogance. As any young bride, she retained a childish preoccupation for objects and people who might satisfy her own regal hungers and somehow qualify her as the fascinating object that would stimulate her husband into a sexual performance that was denied to the would-be lovers. This failed consumation was naturally blamed on the queen already humiliated and She was simply dropped into a very dangerous court when no more than a teenager. The language and customs were so unlike her Austrian childhood memories that she was an easy target for the ruthless in and about her palace. What fraser does quite well with regard to a popular biography is scrupulous discipline with regard to research and organization. One needn't memorize facts or personalities because they are so integrated into her subject that they are simply a part of the story and thereby easily absorbed. Her perspective of Marie is similar, to the sympathetic and equally tragic biography of Mary Queen of Scots, another absorbing and thorough study. As a woman of her time, Marie had no real power other than to bestow favoritism and spend freely. Her fate was to be marginalized by her sex as well as her foreign birth. She had limited resources of her own, her brothers who rose to the throne in Austria were essentially unreliable for purposes of soldifying her position. Her last tragic months and the terrifying death were managed without the frivolous, histrionic manner by which she's been reviled, but as a mature and royal personage who even in the midst of this bloody period, was utterly dignified. The book is full of the kind of details of dress, furniture and adulterous deceits that are of interest to certain readers. It allows a fair amount of historical detail that enhances the story's progress and, for me at least, long for more.

Let them eat cake!:
If you enjoy historical memoirs, then Marie Antoinette will absolutely come to life through this book. Antonia Frasier creates a very sympathetic portrait of MA from the traumatic parting from her mother when she left her childhood home to marry a boy she'd never met, to the tauntings she endured for being childless for years, and of course to the bitter end at the hands of the mob. Lots of court intrigue is explored, also the myth that she ever said "let them eat cake." The author clearly came to respect MA, who apparently always had something nice to say to everyone. I'd recommend this to anyone interested in reading about women's lives or exploring why the knives really came out for MA, who had no real political power.

If you are into female historic figures, this is a must-read:
Non-fiction literature, specially historic literature, can at times be dreadfully boring and full of confusing details. This book redeems every boring historic volume I have read to date. The author hooks you in right away, and provides vivid details of Marie Antoinette's life in her early years in Austria, her teenage and adult years in Versailles, and her last years as a prisoner of the revolution. From the fabric materials and colours Marie Antoinette prefered, to various accounts reflecting her taste in elegant simplicity, entertainment, beauty and amusement, this book gives the reader a glimpse of what Marie Antoinette was like as a person, a wife, a mother, a friend, and a ruler.

Excellent!:
I have read most of her books & this was by far the best one so far! I couldn't put it down!