A Certain Slant of Light

littlerhymes and I have begun A Place of Greater Safety! As it's a big chunk of a book, I've decided to post about each part as we go along, so it's not overwhelming at the end. And we just finished part one, so...

Part one focuses mainly on the childhoods of our three protagonists, which I didn't expect. I thought we'd be diving right into some guillotinings or at least the storming of the Bastille. But no! We're going back to the beginning, David Copperfield style. They are born.

Danton grows into an adventurous young scamp who keeps getting gored by bulls and trampled by pigs because he doesn't quite grasp the line between "bravery" and "recklessness." (I love the bit where Mantel spends an entire section detailing all the horrible mishaps that Danton mostly brings upon himself, and then wraps it up with something like "Danton always described his childhood as supremely happy.")

Camille Desmoulins becomes a sarcastic emo kid who may or may not have a bang of black hair falling in his eyes. He definitely tells one of his father's most important clients to his face that he thinks he's despicable.

And Robespierre is a little swot who has to give a welcome speech in Latin to Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette when they come to the boarding school where he and Camille study. The monarchs keep all the boys waiting in the rain for two hours, roll up in their carriage and refuse to get out, and then roll away while Robespierre is mid-speech. Robespierre keeps right on orating.

We also meet a ton of other people who I can't keep track of and mostly don't think will be important, as they are the provincial family members of our protags and presumably won't show up too much later. (Except Robespierre's brother, who I know will be on the scene during the Revolution.)

And onward and upward! Danton and Camille are both on the scene in Paris. I believe the American Revolution is on the horizon.