The Game of Hope by Sandra Gulland

Fifteen-year-old Hortense Beauharnais is a survivor of the French Revolution. It is 1798, four years after the Reign of Terror ended with the beheading of its architect, Robespierre. Hortense's father, Alexandre was guillotined days before the end, but her mother barely survived, due to be executed the next day. After the murder of her father, twelve-year-old Hortense was sent to the Institute, an all-girls school run by Maitresse Campan and located in a chateau that used to belong to a wealthy family in Montagne-du-Bon-Air. Hortense's mother, Rose, now called Josephine, is re-married to General Napoleon Bonaparte who is with the French army in Egypt, as is her older brother Eugene.

Also attending the boarding school are her cousin Emilie and Maitresse Campan's niece, Adele Auguie who is nicknamed Mouse. Emilie attends the school because she has no family to care for her; her father fled during the Reign of Terror and her mother was imprisoned but is now married to her former prison guard. Emilie is newly married to Captain Antoine Lavalette, an arranged marriage to an officer in Napoleon's army in Egypt. Almost every girl in the boarding school is from the aristocracy and has terrible memories of the revolution.

Hortense has just recently returned to the school after spending three months caring for her injured mother. The story opens with Hortense suffering from a yet another nightmare of her father approaching and reaching out for her, his body headless. Her school mates believe that Hortense has seen a ghost.

As a "Multi", that is an older girl who wears a multi-coloured sash, Hortense is responsible for helping the younger girls who are divided into levels by colour. She helps them get up and get dressed in the morning, get to the dining hall and to learn proper etiquette. Her charge is 4-year-old Nelly.

One of the Multis is Bonaparte's sister, Annunziata who like the rest of the family, has changed her name, calling herself Caroline. She has been late at least five times, so Citoyenne Florentine who is the night monitor, assigns her to the Table of Repentance. Maitresse Campan takes time to speak to Hortense, concerned about her recurring nightmare of her father and telling her she once met her father and saw him dance with the Queen. Maitresse also informs Hortense that she will be taking music lessons from the new music instructor, Citoyen Hyacinthe Jadin, who also teaches at the Conservatory in Paris.

Hortense's mother Josephine returns to Paris and has her daughter accompany her to a "civic celebration of Bonaparte's victorious Battle of the Pyramids and his triumphant entry into Cairo"  Hortense is concerned for her mother who seems deeply upset but who won't let on what is troubling her.  However, when Hortense returns to the school she learns from Eliza that the entire French fleet has been sunk by the British - all thirteen ships and that they now control the Mediterranean.

Out of concern for her brother Eugene, Hortense continues writing him letters which she does not mail. In these letters she also mentions her concern for Major Christophe Duroc whom she is infatuated with.

Hortense Beauharnais

Then terrible rumours circulate that Napoleon has been assassinated by an Arab. However, they soon learn that this is not true, but that Eugene was injured. In the summer of 1799, Hortense returns to her mother's home, Malmaison. Hortense questions Emilie about her father because Caroline has hinted that he is not really her father. Emilie reveals to Hortense the difficult situation between her parents and their separation but does tell her that in the end her father acknowledged that she was his daughter. Unfortunately, the two girls quarrel when Hortense tells Emilie that her affections as a married woman for Louis Bonaparte are wrong. During the summer Emilie is stricken with small pox and although she recovers, her face is badly scarred.

Hortense, Emilie, and Caroline return to the Institute but soon after Hortense becomes ill and is forced to return to her mother in Paris. Meanwhile Josephine attempts to convince the Directors to send a fleet to rescue Bonaparte, but they refuse. Then she learns that Bonaparte and Eugene have managed to travel to the port in the south of France. Determined to meet her husband before his family, Josephine along with Hortense travel to the south of France but they miss Bonaparte. Instead they journey back to Paris to find Bonaparte already there and refusing to see Josephine. Eventually it is Hortense and Eugene who convince him to see her and they reconcile. Josephine's home becomes Napoleon's base with many soldiers coming and going. This results in Hortense seeing Eugene's fellow aide-de-camp, Colonel Christophe Duroc.

Napoleon survives a coup and the Directors running the government are disbanded. A three person Consulate is formed that consists of Napoleon Bonaparte and two previous directors. Napoleon moves Josephine and her family into the Petit Luxembourg. They do not know it yet but this is beginning of Napoleon's rise to rule France. For Hortense. it marks the beginning of her life in French society with many opportunities to meet Christophe Duroc. Soon enough she will be pulled into the political intrigue of Napoleonic France.

Discussion

The Game of Hope was authored by Sandra Gulland who has written extensively on Hortense's mother, Josephine Beauharnais Bonaparte. She was asked to write a YA biography on Josephine's daughter, Hortense but Gulland was curious to know if Hortense's life would be interesting enough to write about and she learned that it was. To that end, Gulland has crafted a fascinating account of Hortense Beauharnais's life and a revealing account of life in France in the years immediately after the Reign of Terror and during the rise of Napoleon. Not only do young readers learn about Hortense but also about her mother Josephine, the rapidly changing political scene in France during the period immediately following the Reign of Terror and Napoleon's rapid rise to power.

Gulland had to pick and choose what she was going to include in her story. For example she states in her Afterword that in real life there were many more relatives and friends than could be reasonably included in the story. Families in Catholic France were much larger and many well-to-do families had servants. To keep the number of characters manageable, many were left out of the novel.

The Game of Hope portrays a France struggling to come to terms with the horrors of the Reign of Terror. Hortense has recurrent nightmares of her father's execution. While Hortense is aware that her mother escaped being guillotined by only a day, her cousin Emilie's mother - Hortense's aunt was not so lucky. She jumped to her death the day before Robespierre was executed, so as to save her daughter from being impoverished. Convents are empty because all the nuns have been executed. 

Gulland has crafted a believable portrayal of Hortense Beauharnais, a young woman who was a gifted composer and who was tutored by Hyacinthe Jardin, a promising young composer who died prematurely of tuberculosis. Hortense struggles to come to terms with the past that includes her father's tumultuous relationship with her mother and his horrific death at the guillotine. But she also must reconcile her view of her mother who seems to be romantically involved with Citoyen Hippolyte Charles, while her mother's second husband and Hortense's stepfather, Napoleon Bonaparte is in Egypt. Hortense dislikes the entire Bonaparte family.  Gulland portrays a young Hortense coming of age, discovering her attraction to the older Colonel Christophe Duroc and their blossoming friendship as they attend balls and other social functions.

The novel takes its name from a card game that was originally invented as a parlour game to be played with dice. It was forgotten but resurfaced in 1799 when Mlle. Lenormand began using the cards for fortune telling, an activity still forbidden by the Catholic church. Gulland's novel is divided in to eight parts featuring a card from the Game of Hope.  Gulland has Hortense use the cards on several occasions, in an attempt to predict what her future holds at a time in France when life was very unpredictable. Of course, no card game can predict one's future life, as Hortense soon learns.

Gulland in her extensive Afterword, reveals how Hortense's life really played out. She was never able to marry her love, Christophe as both her mother and Maitresse Campan counselled against it and wanted her to marry Louis Bonaparte. Hortense did relent and marry Louis but their marriage was not a happy one, nor was Christophe Duroc's marriage to a wealthy and beautiful woman. Marriages at this time were often made to cement political alliances and the feelings of those involved were not really considered. This was demonstrated in the novel by her cousin Emilie's arranged marriage to an older man, Antoine Lavalette whom she despises. Eventually his care towards her after her beauty is marred by small pox, kindles her love for him.

Although Game of Hope is well written, it will likely appeal mostly to die-hard historical fiction fans and those with a specific interest in the post-French Revolution era and Napoleon. The story is mostly character driven, with Gulland's fine attention to historical detail. The author has included a Cast of Characters, a Glossary, a map of Paris as well as a list of the cards from the Game of Hope. 
Hyacinthe Jardin's compositions are still performed today and some like her F Minor Op. 1 No. 3 written for violin, viola and violoncello can be found on YouTube.

Her biography may be accessed from the Foundation Napoleon website:

https://www.napoleon.org/en/history-of-the-two-empires/biographies/beauharnais-hortense-de/

Hortense image: By Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson - www.rijksmuseum.nl, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1228587

Book Details:

The Game of Hope by Sandra Gulland
New York: Viking, an Imprint of Penguin Random House LLC     2018
370 pp.

Faces of the Dead by Suzanne Weyn

Faces of the Dead is historical fiction with an occult twist that makes use of the switched identities trope.

Marie-Therese-Charlotte of France, Madame Royale, daughter of Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI, has a good friend in Ernestine, whose mother is a chambermaid. Marie-Therese's mother, the Queen arranged for Ernestine to be her daughter's companion and they become good friends. The two girls look so remarkably alike that few people can tell them apart and so beginning around the age of twelve take advantage of this by often switching places. By the time they are sixteen, the two have switched places frequently because Marie-Therese is determined to learn what life is like outside the palace, to see the real France.

Ernestine tells Marie-Therese that she can sneak out of the palace by hitching a ride with Jacques who goes into Paris for supplies. On her first ride in with Jacques, Marie-Therese learns from him that the French people believe her mother is extravagant at the expense of the people and that she is an Austrian spy. On her own Marie-Therese meets a boy named Henri who tells her not to tell anyone that she works at the palace. Henri takes her to the workshop of Mademoiselle Grosholtz who recreates realistic figures in wax. Dr. Curtius taught Mademoiselle Grosholtz how to make wax figures and she has recreated scenes from many settings including Ancient Rome and Egypt and from Marie-Therese's home, at Versailles.

With Henri, Marie-Therese learns about the hatred directed towards her family by the people of Paris. She sees the sick and hungry children, the poor mothers and remembers when the women broke into the palace demanding food for their starving families. The revolutionaries, who wear the red, white and blue ribbons,  want to kill Marie-Therese's mother and father and her family.

While she is gone, Ernestine, posing as Marie-Therese, meets Marie Therese's cousin, Louis-Antoine d'Angouleme, whom she is to marry. Ernestine enjoys the duc d'Angouleme's company but Marie-Therese is not able to connect so well with him, Louis-Antoine tells her that unless she is more like she was before (when he was talking to Ernestine) they will not be happy together.

At the Place de la Concorde, Marie-Therese sees the guillotine for the first time, and sees the people rioting in the streets, intent upon storming the palace and calling for her parents to be put to death. Afraid for her family she races back to Versailles, warning her father. Her father suggests they give the people food, while her mother believes that the gates will keep the frenzied crowds outside the palace grounds. However, the mob finds its way into Versailles but are not satisfied with the bread given to them.  When the mob breaks into the palace, Marie-Therese, her younger brother Louis-Charles, Ernestine, and the king and queen attempt to escape but are forced back to Paris. When the carriage stops, Marie-Therese's Mama insists she leave and hide out telling her that her uncle from Austria is coming to take her. For three days Marie Therese waits and then heads back to Paris where she stays with Henri.

Eventually Marie-Therese and Henri become homeless after a series of misfortunes. Her family is placed at Tuileries where Marie-Therese sometimes goes to watch them in the courtyard. Eventually they discover that Mademoiselle Grosholtz has be freed and is working at Dr. Curtius's exhibit. With her is a beautiful dark-haired woman, Rose de Beauharnais who was born in Martinique and who has knowledge of magic. Mademoiselle Grosholtz tells them that she must collect the severed heads from the Place de la Revolution to make death masks of the beautiful and famous.

On their first day there, Marie-Therese learns that the women of Paris are planning to storm the Tulieres and kill the queen. Marie-Therese is carried along by the crowd, but manages to sneak away and warn her mother and family who escape into a secret safe room. When the riot is over,Monsieur Clery tells them they are expected at the National Assembly but Marie-Therese is told to go back to her life on the streets of Paris until the revolution is over. Mama gives her a velvet purse containing jewels and coins to help. Once outside again, Marie-Therese meets up with Henri who now reveals to her that he knows who she is. Henri also tells Marie-Therese that Mademoiselle Grosholtz also knows, but that they will not turn her it.

Months pass as Marie-Therese lives with Mademoiselle Grosholtz, helping her make her death masks. Henri and Marie-Therese fall in love despite the gory revolution. Will the revolution  ever end and will Marie-Therese ever see her family again?

Faces of the Dead could have been an interesting story but it was marred by Weyn's choice of two very strange storylines; the first playing on the recently revived substitution theory which posits that Ernestine de Lambriquet bore a remarkable resemblance to Marie-Therese-Charlotte, Madame Royal and that they two may have switched places during the revolution, the second storyline involving Creole voodoo to revive the spirits of those guillotined during the revolution.

If Weyn had focused on the historical story of Marie-Therese and the French Revolution, the novel would have succeeded admirably. Because the author had to focus on two very different threads, neither really lived up to expectations. Historical fiction is successful if the author is able to recreate the time period and have the characters behave in a manner consistent with that era. Although Weyn succeeds in portraying the horror and gore of the revolution, neither Marie-Therese's actions nor the paranormal storyline are believable. As an aristocrat, Marie-Therese would have stood out on the streets of Paris both in the way she spoke and in the way she behaved. She lived a very isolated, privileged life at the palace, something ironically that Weyn effectively demonstrated in her parents reactions to the revolutionaries. As a person to whom every care was attended to, she likely would have been extremely shocked to see how the average French person lived and not so eager to partake of  such a life. As to the substitution theory, it is widely regarded by historians as myth but readers will find the Author's Note which goes into greater depth about the mystery to be interesting. Readers might find the views on the blog,  Tea At Trianon also interesting.

With a separate storyline based on the occult, Faces of the Dead strays from pure historical fiction. The paranormal storyline was not necessary and ultimately pushed the novel into the realm of ridiculous with Weyn using the spirit-calling as a way to reincarnate Marie-Anoinette at the end - a totally absurd notion.Weyn provides an interesting Author's Note at the back of her novel which goes into greater depth about the mystery.

Overall, a strange novel, whose dark, mysterious cover fits the paranormal storyline in Faces of the Dead.

Book Details:
Faces of the Dead by Suzanne Weyn
New York: Scholastic Press       2014
201 pp.

The Pale Assassin by Patricia Elliott

The Pale Assassin is the first of two books by Patricia Elliott that tell the story of an aristocratic family during the French Revolution. 

In The Pale Assassin, Elliott concentrates on developing her characters and setting the stage for what will happen in the second novel. The reader develops a good sense of what Paris and France was like before the Revolution.  The Pale Assassin works its way to a thrilling conclusion.

In this novel readers are introduced to our heroine, Eugenie Boncoeur, a fourteen-year-old aristocrat and her older brother, Armand, a royalist who is intent on helping King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette escape from Paris. Armand is part of a secret group who are plotting to save the King. Helping him is his best friend, Julien de Fortin, whom Eugenie doesn't much like. We also meet their adversaries, the "Pale Assassin", Raoul Goullet, an evil man who is intent upon destroying the Boncoeur family, and who is determined to kidnap Eugenie who has been promised to him in marriage. He is aided in his attack on the Boncoeurs by Guy Deschamps, a two-faced scoundrel, whom the naive Eugenie is infatuated with. Deschamps goes by the pseudonym of "Le Scapel".

As the situation in Paris grows increasingly violent, the Boncoeurs realize, almost too late, that they must leave for England, where they have a wealthy uncle. Armand decides to delay their departure until the day King Louis is to be guillotined, also the day when the royalists plan to attack and save the king. Julien is part of this attack, but when things do not go as planned, Armand and Julien must change their plans. Will they be able to get Eugenie out of Paris, out of France and more importantly away from La Fantome?!!

Discussion

The Pale Assassin is a well-crafted novel which will appeal to teens who enjoy historical fiction.  The Pale Assassin evokes memories of Baroness Orczy's Scarlet Pimpernel series written at the turn of the last century (1905).  It has a dashing hero, a damsel who is being blackmailed by a scoundrel all set against the backdrop of the French Revolution. The Pale Assassin has believable characters, an exciting plot line and is well written. 

Book Details:
The Pale Assassin by Patricia Elliott
New York: Holiday House 2009
336 pp.

The Traitor's Smile by Patricia Elliott

The Traitor's Smile set in revolutionary France is the sequel to Elliott's Pale Assassin. Eugenie De Boncoeur, a young aristocrat from France, has newly arrived in Deal, England, along with Julien de Fortin, a friend of Eugenie's brother, Armand. They are finally safe from the French Revolution which has claimed most of France's aristocrats. But Eugenie's brother, Arman De Boncoeur is languishing in La Grande Force, once a beautiful palace of the Marais, lately a prison for men.
Eugenie has escaped to Deal to stay with her English uncle, Thomas Coveney, who is a surgeon at the Naval Hospital in Deal, and his daughter Hetta. Hetta is an intelligent and spirited young woman who believes that the monarchy should be replaced. She often dresses as a boy so that she can go down to the harbour and help out the local smugglers. And she seems to have taken a romantic interest in Julien, much to Eugenie's dismay.

Unknown to all, Eugenie has been followed to Deal by Guy Deschamps, once a friend of Armand but who is now a spy who goes by the name of La Scapel and who is working for the sinister and cruel Raoul Goullet, known as La Fantome. Eugenie is unaware of Deschamps connections to Goullet and refuses to believe that Deschamps is the one who attacked Julien in France. However, she soon learns that Deschamps is quite willing to take her back to Paris, by force if necessary, to marry Goullet whom her guardian promised her to, years before. Guy Deschamps tells Eugenie that if she upholds her end of the contract, her brother will be set free by Goullet.

Eugenie and Hetta end up back in France, via a wayward balloon trip in a last minute escape from the clutches of Guy Deschamps. Once in France they are helped by those fighting the revolution. They eventually meet up with Julien who has returned to his country to continue fighting for peace. In pursuit, is Deschamps, who is determined to capture Eugenie and kill de Fortin, thus raising his profile with Goullet and ultimately Robespierre. Goullet's motives are more personal - he is out for revenge, the details of which the reader learns near the end of the book.

Discussion

For the most part, The Traitor's Smile was an exceptionally exciting read, even if it was a bit predictable and even a little familiar. The Traitor's Smile is reminiscent of The Scarlet Pimpernel books written by Baroness Orczy. There are some similarities between the storyline of the two books, but the Pimpernel books are by far, better written. If you haven't read them, and you love historical fiction AND romance,  the entire series by Baroness Orczy is highly recommended.

The characters are well developed even if our heroine, Eugenie, is at times frustratingly naive. Elliott's portrayal of the decay of France and the decline into anarchy is well done. Young readers will get a true sense of how a the French citizen's attempted to forge a new path for their country but inevitably lost the jewels of justice and liberty.

The story is marred by romantic sections that read like cheap paperback romances and were out of character with the quality of the writing in the rest of the book. 

Book Details:
The Traitor's Smile by Patricia Elliott
New York: Holiday House 2010
308 pp.