Days of Splendor, Days of Sorrow: A Novel of Marie Antoinette by Juliet Grey: A Book Review

Days of Splendor, Days of Sorrow: A Novel of Marie Antoinette
Author: Juliet Grey
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Release Date: 2012
Pages: 448
Source: Personal Collection
Synopsis: A captivating novel of rich spectacle and royal scandal, Days of Splendor, Days of Sorrow spans fifteen years in the fateful reign of Marie Antoinette, France’s most legendary and notorious queen.

Paris 1774. At the tender age of eighteen, Marie Antoinette ascends to the French throne alongside her husband, Louis XVI. But behind the extravagance of the young queen’s elaborate silk gowns and dizzyingly high coiffures, she harbors deep fears for her future and that of the Bourbon dynasty.

From her early growing pains of marriage to the joy of conceiving a child, from her passion for Swedish military attache Axel von Fersen to the devastating Affair of the Diamond Necklace, Marie Antoinette tries to rise above the gossip and rivalries that encircle her. But as revolution blossoms in America, a much larger threat looms beyond the gilded gates of Versailles-- one that could sweep away the French monarchy forever.

My Review: This is the second book in Juliet Grey’s trilogy of Marie Antoinette. In this novel, Marie Antoinette has at last become Queen of France. She decides to live a lavish lifestyle of gambling, dancing, and hosting parties, donning elaborate dresses and having extravagant and sometimes silly hairstyles. However in the midst of the glitz and glamour of being queen, she arouses disapproval and hatred of her French subjects.

In the beginning of the novel, the Parisian crowd greatly welcomes King Louis XVI’s reign with open arms. The king is young and kind-hearted and he has a beautiful, charming, young wife at his side. He seems to have a promising reign unlike his predecessor, Louis XV, whose reign caused hatred among his subjects. However, the king lacks one thing that would help secure France’s promising future-- an heir. When year after year goes by without an heir, they start to place their blame on the queen. They blame her for having an extravagant lifestyle for she is dancing and acting when she should be focusing on having a heir. This starts to damage her reputation and causes her to be hated and constantly mocked and criticized by her subjects.

Marie Antoinette’s high-rolling lifestyle is the result of her unhappiness to not get a dauphin. She is pressured by both her mother and her brother to get an heir, and she feels like she has failed her mother, her brother, and her subjects. She decides to spend excessively to help ease her stress and disappointment. However, when she does get an heir many years later, her reputation has already been tarnished and once she becomes the scapegoat in the infamous Affair of the Diamond Necklace, she has already lost the love of her subjects, and there is nothing she could do to help recover her subjects’ love.

Overall, this novel is about friendship, loyalty, love, betrayal, and scandal. This novel shows an in-depth psyche of Marie Antoinette and the motives to her actions. Marie Antoinette is a complex woman, who is human and makes mistakes. She can sometimes be rash when she is emotional. This is a sympathetic novel to Marie Antoinette and is a good sequel to Becoming Marie Antoinette. I will recommend this book to fans of historical fiction and anyone interested in Marie Antoinette.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth: Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer by Samuel Noah Kramer and Diane Wolkstein: A Book Review

Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth: Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer Author: Samuel Noah Kramer and Diane Wolkstein Genre: Nonfiction, History, Biography, Religion, Mythology Publisher: Harper Perennial Release Date: 1983 Pages: 256 Source: Personal Collection Synopsis: With the long-awaited publication of this book, we have for the first time in any modern literary form one of the most vital and important of ancient myths—that of Inanna, the world’s first goddess of recorded history and the beloved deity of the ancient Sumerians. The stories and hymns of Inanna (known to the Semites as Ishtar) are inscribed on clay tablets which date back to 2,000 B.C. Over the past forty years, these cuneiform tablets have gradually been restored and deciphered by a small group of international scholars. In this groundbreaking book, Samuel Noah Kramer, the preeminent living expert on Sumer, and Diane Wolkstein, a gifted storyteller and folklorist, have retranslated, order...

Dragon Lady: The Evil History of China's Last Empress by Sterling and Peggy Seagrave: A Book Review

Dragon Lady: The Evil History of China's Last Empress Author: Sterling Seagrave and Peggy Seagrave Genre: Nonfiction. History, Biography Publisher: Bowstring Books Release Date: 2010 Pages: 624 Source: Kindle Unlimited Synopsis: The author of The Soong Dynasty gives us our most vivid and reliable biography yet of the Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi, remembered through the exaggeration and falsehood of legend as the ruthless Manchu concubine who seduced and murdered her way to the Chinese throne in 1861. My Review: Empress Dowager Cixi was one of the last empresses of the imperial dynasty. She is attributed to the fall of the dynasty. She is often portrayed as a cunning, manipulative, and power-hungry figure. However, in this biography of the Empress Dowager, the authors claim that the rumors surrounding Cixi are false. The people who started the rumors were foreigners who blackened her name for personal reasons. Thus, the authors conclude that Empress Dowager ...

Guest Post by Aleksey Linetskiy: The Women Behind the Klondike Story

Today's guest writer is Aleksey Linetskiy. He is the co-author of Finch and Hawk: The Klondike Letters , which is a unique yearly subscription in which the reader reads a story by mail. In this guest post, he introduces us to a few historical women of the Klondike era. Some of these women are Alice Freeman, Flora Shaw, and Helen Dare. Thank you, Mr. Linetskiy! The Women Behind the Klondike Story Before we began writing Finch and Hawk: The Klondike Letters , my partner, Alona Umansky, and I spent a great deal of time researching the Klondike Gold Rush. We were interested in finding the stories of people who maybe didn’t become rich and famous but still went through the experience of a great stampede. As we were reading the newspapers of the time and firsthand accounts, it became very clear to us that we wanted to tell at least part of the story through the women’s eyes. There were so many incredible women who underto...

History from a Woman's Perspective- A Book Blog

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