A place of greater safety

Summary

Summary: With A Place of Greater Safety, Hilary Mantel makes her American debut in a dazzling and magisterial novel about one of the most crucial--and shattering--events in modern history, the French Revolution. Already acclaimed in her native England, this book should provoke an equally enthusiastic response from readers on this side of the Atlantic. At the center of this bold epic are three men who led the revolt against the tyrannies and injustices of the Ancient Regime: Georges-Jacques Danton, an ugly, ambitious, and charismatic spokesman; Maximilien Robespierre, slight, precise, wishing to do good for others; and their friend, Camille Desmoulins, an inveterate conspirator pamphleteer, and seducer (obsessed for years by a married woman, he eventually marries--he's not sure how--her daughter). Three young men of obscure origins from the provinces, all make their way to Paris, where, in 1787, they will be presented with--and will seize--the opportunity to transform their world. Surrounding these men are their friends, their families and lovers, as well as the famous figures and events that Mantel has so brilliantly depicted ... Louis XVI and his decadent court, Mirabeau and Marat, the Marquis de Lafayette and the Marquis de Sade, Saint-Just and Choderlos de Laclos, the Committee of Public Safety, the Mountain, the Gironde, the Sans-culottes and Dr. Guillotin's machine. Having unleashed the forces of revolution in the name of liberty and happiness, Danton, Robespierre, and Desmoulins will become witnesses to, participants in, and, eventually, victims of, an uncontrollable escalating spiral of rage and need, terror and violence. An audacious, informed, and encompassing portrayal of the genuine achievements and the harrowing tragedy of the French Revolution, Hilary Mantel's A Place of Greater Safety is fiction on a grand scale and in the grand tradition.