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City of Darkness City of Light A Novel edition by Marge Piercy Literature Fiction eBooks

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City of Darkness City of Light A Novel edition by Marge Piercy Literature Fiction eBooks

Piercy is a legend among feminists, and her writing was pivotal in my own development during the late 1970s and early 1980s as a newly-hatched adult. When this title, a novel based on the French Revolution, came out in 1996, I put it on my Christmas list and read it hungrily once I received it. When I noticed that it was released digitally this spring, I scored a digital copy from Open Road Integrated Media and Net Galley in exchange for this honest review. It’s a novel that is definitely worth reading twice.

Piercy is brilliant not only in bringing characters to life—and she did a prodigious amount of work before doing so, reading piles of biographies, memoirs, letters and other documents—but also in conveying the reader to the time and place In question. I think it’s because of this that her novel helped me to understand how such an amazing, incredible thing, the revolution, the democratic impulse that overthrew a monarchy, could end so badly. Dry history texts chronicle the “excesses” of the Jacobins. Say what? How meaningless is that? And it is by being able to see the roles played by key figures in the revolution, including the women that are usually left out, that I can see why the leadership degenerated as it did. An inexperienced working class with no background in how to organize a struggle ultimately paid the price, but in the end, the nation was still better off than it had been beforehand.

Using the grammar and conversational conventions of today for easier access to a popular audience, Piercy transports us back to a time when a life expectancy was less than fifty years for most people; open sewers flowed through the streets of Paris, causing horrible illnesses and a high infant mortality rate; and a starving seven year old child could be publicly hanged for stealing bread.

In fact, the bread riots led by the women of Paris were where it all began.

One thing readers should know if they read this novel digitally is that there is a glossary of sorts, a long list of characters and a few basic facts to identify them, but it’s at the back of the book, so you will want to go over it before you start and then refer back to it when you find yourself confused. The topic is huge, and you may need this cheat sheet, so it’s good to know it’s there. There are so many historical characters here, and if you aren’t fluent in this area, you may lose track of Robespierre, Danton, Madame Roland, and oh of course, Marat. And back then, Camille was a man’s name!

Piercy tells the story using the points of view of a wide range of figures important to this struggle. She gives a fair hearing to the perspectives of those that stood left, right, and center in this conflict, denying a sympathetic ear only to royalty—and even Marie Antoinette is treated with surprising sympathy. I came away feeling as if I knew so much more about the French Revolution and its terrible conclusion when I had read it, and rereading it was even more helpful, because it’s a lot to digest all at once, even if one is already aware of the broad contours of this pivotal time in French history.

When I love a book hard, I push it at everyone that comes within my reach, and I have pushed this particular novel at a lot of people over the years. Given how many times I loaned out my own (purchased) hard cover copy, it’s surprising that it isn’t falling apart, and maybe even more surprising that it’s always been returned to me.

Whether you prefer to read digitally or to purchase a paper copy, City of Darkness, City of Light is the most readable, accessible treatment of the French Revolution that I have seen. The fact that Piercy includes the key role played by women, both among the toiling masses and the elite salons of the intelligentsia makes it even better.

Recommended wholeheartedly to anyone that wants to understand the French Revolution!


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City of Darkness City of Light A Novel edition by Marge Piercy Literature Fiction eBooks Reviews

I've been ready Marge Piercy for almost 40 years. I like her style and her character development. It's hard to take real people from history and give them a voice. Marge Piercy does a great job. The book was overly long and I got lost a few times in the maze of characters of I would have given it five starts. Few people can write with the skill of Marge Piercy.
City of Darkness, City of Light is a novel about the French Revolution. In it, Marge Piercy follows the lives of six people who were movers and shakers in the Revolution three men – Georges Danton, Maximilian Robespierre, and Marie Jean Nicholas Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet – and three women – Pauline Leon, Claire Lacombe, and Manon Roland.

Danton and Robespierre were both lawyers before the Revolution and worked their way into leadership positions in the various legislative bodies that came into being during the years of the Revolution. Both were at one time considered the most powerful man in the country, and both ended at the guillotine.

The Marquis de Condorcet was primarily a scientist and mathematician. He also somehow got into some of the legislative bodies of the revolution and wrote a complicated Constitution for France which seems not to have been adopted. He seems not to have been a bad sort. Apparently, there is controversy over how he died. In this book, he takes poison as he is about to be caught while running from his political enemies. Other sources indicate that he too went to the guillotine.

Manon Roland was the wife of a provincial bureaucrat. During the Revolution, he was elected to several positions in the government in Paris and
Manon went with him. She was an intelligent woman and a good wife, working behind the scenes to further his career. She wrote his speeches and wrote articles for one of the newspapers. She also ran a politically oriented salon where ideas were discussed, and movements toward power were begun. She too ended her life on the guillotine.

Only Claire Lacombe, an actress who played many roles glorifying moments in the Revolution for various theatrical entities, and Pauline Leon, who was a chocolate maker in Paris and who was prominent in the early bread riots, the attack on the Bastille, and other movements of the people in the early days, managed to survive the Revolution and the Reign of Terror. Both of them were arrested and spent long stretches in various prisons, but history moved on before they could be executed, and they were eventually released and returned to normal lives.

This is almost the first book I have read that gave much more than a thumbnail sketch of the French Revolution and what it was about (besides getting rid of the aristocracy). I confess I am still somewhat confused as to the relationships between the Committee, the Convention, and the Commune, but I now have a somewhat clearer picture of some of the people involved.
I've read and enjoyed several Marge Piercy books. City of Darkness, City of Light is not one of them. If it weren't for my lifelong pledge to myself that I'd finish every book I started, I would have put this book aside long before the end. Which, I suppose, would have been a loss since it wasn't until quite a way past the midway point that the book became interesting, perhaps because it was, by that point, a retelling of historically well-known events of the French Revolution. The problem for me, I believe, is the book's structure. Rather than allowing the narrative to unfold in straightforward, chronological order, Piercy chooses to devote each chapter to one of six or seven main characters, each character instrumental in some way in the Revolution. So one has read about, say, Ropespierre, in a short chapter and then must wait another five or six chapters before getting back to Ropespierre. Moreover, each chapter of each character's story is chock full of names names names - of people, organizations, events, political ideologies, etc. I had a difficult time keeping track of it all who's who, what's what, where they are at any given moment. My interest frequently flagged.
Piercy is a legend among feminists, and her writing was pivotal in my own development during the late 1970s and early 1980s as a newly-hatched adult. When this title, a novel based on the French Revolution, came out in 1996, I put it on my Christmas list and read it hungrily once I received it. When I noticed that it was released digitally this spring, I scored a digital copy from Open Road Integrated Media and Net Galley in exchange for this honest review. It’s a novel that is definitely worth reading twice.

Piercy is brilliant not only in bringing characters to life—and she did a prodigious amount of work before doing so, reading piles of biographies, memoirs, letters and other documents—but also in conveying the reader to the time and place In question. I think it’s because of this that her novel helped me to understand how such an amazing, incredible thing, the revolution, the democratic impulse that overthrew a monarchy, could end so badly. Dry history texts chronicle the “excesses” of the Jacobins. Say what? How meaningless is that? And it is by being able to see the roles played by key figures in the revolution, including the women that are usually left out, that I can see why the leadership degenerated as it did. An inexperienced working class with no background in how to organize a struggle ultimately paid the price, but in the end, the nation was still better off than it had been beforehand.

Using the grammar and conversational conventions of today for easier access to a popular audience, Piercy transports us back to a time when a life expectancy was less than fifty years for most people; open sewers flowed through the streets of Paris, causing horrible illnesses and a high infant mortality rate; and a starving seven year old child could be publicly hanged for stealing bread.

In fact, the bread riots led by the women of Paris were where it all began.

One thing readers should know if they read this novel digitally is that there is a glossary of sorts, a long list of characters and a few basic facts to identify them, but it’s at the back of the book, so you will want to go over it before you start and then refer back to it when you find yourself confused. The topic is huge, and you may need this cheat sheet, so it’s good to know it’s there. There are so many historical characters here, and if you aren’t fluent in this area, you may lose track of Robespierre, Danton, Madame Roland, and oh of course, Marat. And back then, Camille was a man’s name!

Piercy tells the story using the points of view of a wide range of figures important to this struggle. She gives a fair hearing to the perspectives of those that stood left, right, and center in this conflict, denying a sympathetic ear only to royalty—and even Marie Antoinette is treated with surprising sympathy. I came away feeling as if I knew so much more about the French Revolution and its terrible conclusion when I had read it, and rereading it was even more helpful, because it’s a lot to digest all at once, even if one is already aware of the broad contours of this pivotal time in French history.

When I love a book hard, I push it at everyone that comes within my reach, and I have pushed this particular novel at a lot of people over the years. Given how many times I loaned out my own (purchased) hard cover copy, it’s surprising that it isn’t falling apart, and maybe even more surprising that it’s always been returned to me.

Whether you prefer to read digitally or to purchase a paper copy, City of Darkness, City of Light is the most readable, accessible treatment of the French Revolution that I have seen. The fact that Piercy includes the key role played by women, both among the toiling masses and the elite salons of the intelligentsia makes it even better.

Recommended wholeheartedly to anyone that wants to understand the French Revolution!