A Place of Greater Safety
A spellbinding, epic novel which recounts the events between the fall of the Ancient Regime and the peak of the Terror, as seen through the eyes of the French Revolution's three protagonists – Georges-Jacques Danton, Maximilien Robespierre and Camille Desmoulins, men whose mix of ambition, idealism, and ego helped unleash the darker side of the Revolution's ideals and brought them eventually to their own tragic ends. Critically acclaimed upon first publication, 'A Place of Greater Safety' is one of Mantel's most celebrated works of fiction.
Stats for nerds
6recommend
12mentions
9people
2015–2024years
75% recommend25% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Anything by Hilary Mantel is extraordinary and worth your reading time. Wolf Hall trilogy threw me into a decade-long search into who really was Thomas Cromwell, A Place of Greater Safety finally made me feel like I understand the French Revolution (I enjoyed this as an audio book on a very long drive) . Thanks to her, complex history has made sense, and how today's machinations are not much different.
- I would check out John Crowley, starting with Little, Big. One of the great American prose stylists.
Hilary Mantel is very good. I haven't read the Wolf Hall books, but A Place of Greater Safety is beautiful and deserves to be better known.
I would also nominate Gene Wolfe, especially The Book of the Sun. Fits very well with the subject matter of Nabokov, as it is also a clever metatextual puzzle, albeit a very different kind.
- In a different genre, Dorothy Dunnett might lay claim to the same historiography, she meticulously researched real events and documented behaviours of the time, and wound up recruiting historical figures of often quite minor note, not by any means all princes and masters, for her cast.
I am tempted to say Colleen McCullough too. But I think less so.
Mantel was perhaps unique in the genre of being celebrated for literary qualities much more than historical. I don't think the Booker committee cared if she did the research.
Also, like all good historians, other historians do take downs on her portrayal of Cromwell. They're "standing on the toes" people more than Newton's "standing on the shoulder of giants" (which of course predates Newton and I will deservedly be castigated for naming it thus)
I really liked "a place of greater safety" from 1992 which proceeded the Cromwell books by some years. Spine shivering stuff. The film "Danton" came out some years before in 1983 and I remember thinking that the book influenced how I thought about the times when I saw the film, long after release.
- I too can recommend A Place of Greater Safety. Really brings the French Revolution to life.
- I do prefer precision in my humor, yes.
Seriously though, I find the entire period fascinating (mostly via the Revolutions postcast, and reading Hilary Mantel's A Place of Greater Safety). The French Revolution is such a pivotal point in Western history that I believe that precision is important.
- Just another plug for A Place of Greater Safety: it's a wonderful book, rather overshadowed by Wolf Hall.
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