City of Darkness City of Light by Marge Piercy

Amazon.com
The French Revolution has been a rich storehouse of material for English-language novelists ever since Dickens, full of compelling characters, operatic plotlines, and thoroughly modern moral dilemmas. The poet and novelist Marge Piercy seems to be trespassing on Dickens' territory with the parallelism of her title (remember "the best of times" and "the worst of times"?) but she creates an even broader canvas and attempts, with varying success, to bring historical characters to life: Robespierre, for instance, is identified simply as Max. The narrative plunges headlong into the Terror, as Piercy spotlights the heretofore neglected women of the Republic. An old-fashioned historical page-turner, this novel could bring the events following the fall of the Bastille to life for a new generation of readers.

Book Description
In her most splendid, thought-provoking novel yet, Marge Piercy brings to vibrant life three women who play prominent roles in the tumultuous, bloody French Revolution--as well as their more famous male counterparts.
Defiantly independent Claire Lacombe tests her theory: if men can make things happen, perhaps women can too. . . . Manon Philipon finds she has a talent for politics--albeit as the ghostwriter of her husband's speeches. . . . And Pauline Léon knows one thing for certain: the women must apply the pressure or their male colleagues will let them starve. While illuminating the lives of Robespierre, Danton, and Condorcet, Piercy also opens to us the minds and hearts of women who change their world, live their ideals--and are prepared to die for them.



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