Fan fiction, and bad fan fiction at that. The most common mistake early fan fiction writers made was the creation of a "Mary Sue". In prehistoric Star Trek fan fic, the Mary Sue was usually the female ensign that was brilliant, reserved and beautiful only to the special few who could see past her reserve. This might be Kirk, once Ensign Mary Sue had saved them from attacking Romulans. As fan fic expanded, the Mary Sue included both fangirls and fanboys. Why write fan fic? A lot of reasons, but at least one is that you don't like the way the characters are handled "canonically", i.e. either by the original authors or those charged with them. For example, despite J.K. Rowling's firm objections, there is a flourishing "Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy Are a Couple!" fan fic genre (one of the first things fan fic did was establish a "slash" genre, in which couples were paired. The couples were usually characters who had hitherto been identified as heterosexual, such as Harry and Draco --- the proto slash was Kirk/Spock). So what does all of this have to do with Ms. Vidal's romps through the histories of Marie Antoinette, Louis XVI and their children? She certainly doesn't make the mistake of ridiculous pairings (Louis XVI/Fersen, say). But she does fall into the Mary Sue trap. Marie Antoinette and Louis become her best friends, to the point of adopting Ms. Vidal's attitudes about lots of things, including Roman Catholic Triumphalism. In her attitudes, poorly voiced by her characters, Ms. Vidal makes Pius IX sound like Garibaldi. There are a lot of readers who crush on Marie Antoinette, God knows. As Caroline Weber points out in her highly readable Queen of Style, the last widely acknowledged Queen of France knew how to dress. She was reasonably attractive . . . for a queen. That's not a knock of Marie Antoinette's personal attributes, but a statement of fact. If you look at portraits of other 18th century sovereigns, the bar is low. Moreover, she was generally in the vicinity of Louis XVI, who despite many sterling qualities, looked like a lump in homemade gravy. Marie Antoinette also had one of the great exit lines in history: "Monsieur, I ask your pardon. I did not do it on purpose." Okay, she was apologizing to her executioner for stepping on his toes, but really, what else could she say about her life? Ms. Vidal writes about the Trianon, flowers, music, simple dances a la Anglaise, delicious meals that appear when wanted, etc. as though it appeared by magic and not on the backs of the French peasantry. Was the Queen culpable for this? Of course not. She was a 14 year-old mailed to France as a deal-sealer for an Austrian/French alliance (oops, there's that slash again). It would have required far more will and intelligence that Marie Antoinette ever possessed to ward off bad behaviors. Despite all of this, the evidence suggests that the Dauphine, then young Queen was simply silly, not corrupt. But Ms. Vidal takes all of this and adds the startling twist that Louis was determined not to touch her until he had won her love. In support of this, Vidal instances the idea that Joseph II made a field trip to France in order to see why his sister and brother-in-law were so loved, and then mutters something about how he also passed on some medical advice to Louis. Come on. That's not what happened, and if the author is honest, she knows it. As I said above, Louis XVI possessed many sterling qualities, and I do think Ms. Vidal at least gets the main one right: he was devoted to France. And as such, he knew perfectly well that a good king secures his succession. Ms. Vidal is writing hagiography, not history. The reader might quibble and say, "no, she is writing literature." Well, she can't have it both ways, although as a novel, this wouldn't make it past most community college creative writing classes. I read a lot of historical novels. Most fall into one of a few categories --- the weirdly intimate (Sharon Kaye Penman, despite being highly entertaining, is the champ at this --- "Uncle Dickon?" "Yes, Ned?" "Now that Aunt Anne has developed the consumption, are you thinking of stealing my throne and marrying my sister Bess so that Harry Richmond may not bed her?" Like that), the very weird (Carolly Erickson's The Tsarina's Daughter --- the poor children of Nicholas and Alexandra are a lot of fan fic writer's best imaginary friends (BIFFs!) or the "want to see how much I have read?" ("Yes, I was at the National Assembly today where Mirabeau harangued us all on the Rights of Man, using the same language that the rascally Thomas Paine has used in one of the many pamphlets that are being distributed in Paris as I speak, pamphlets which defame the very purity of the Queen in ways that are unspeakable, because when the Queen disported herself at the small Trianon, she smelled of flowers and little knew that it had been built for La Pompadour or perhaps it was La Du Barry, anyway, La Somebody Who Was Not Marie Antoinette and therefore it is so unfair!" "Resign yourself to the Sacred Heart!"), a genre that Ms. Vidal has cornered. Then there is the unpleasant Catholic Triumphalism. I am Catholic, born and bred, and even I had some trouble following Ms. Vidal through the thickets of the Sacred Heart devotion (the Miraculous Medal shows up in Madame Royale) and the reception of Extreme Unction by the dying Abbe Edgeworth. Ms. Vidal's point is that things had slid downhill since the French Revolution, which was apparently caused by the pesky philosophes, Masons and the Illuminati (along with the nasty Comte de Provence and the Duc d'Orleans). She is sort of the Jim Garrison of the Revolution, coming up with so many theories as to its cause, none of which are remotely historical. All of this would be tolerable if the writing was remotely good. Alas, even there Ms. Vidal drops the ball. The characters thud along, talking to each other as though they were aware of Ms. Vidal in the corner, scribbling down each sentence, and had decided to posture for future reference at Sodality meetings. Here's the deal: you can't keep describing someone as incredibly charming unless you can demonstrate it by the way she speaks and interacts with other characters. In this book, Marie Antoinette finally emerges as someone you would want to know when Ms. Vidal uses her actual answers at her trial. Not recommended.

This is the first biography of her that manages to handle both the featherhead she was for most of her life, and the woman Marie Antoinette became because of the crisis of 1787-88, and the Revolution from 1789 until 1792 and the September Massacres, when her ability to influence the course of events effectively ended. Hardman has written a curious but effective hybrid. His analysis of the alliance between Barnave and the Queen is very interesting. Antoinette had to balance her epistolary relationship with Barnave, which began after Varennes, with the sexual jealousy of Fersen. Hardman dismisses the idea that Fersen had anything to worry about as Barnave and the Queen were only in the same room once after he rode in the carriage with her that brought the family back from their attempted escape. He does think that the Queen probably flirted a bit with him for pragmatic reasons. However, Hardman accepts the idea that the Queen and Fersen had some kind of sexual relationship, and dates it from the death of Sophie Beatrix in 1786, when the Queen decided she did not want more children. Hardman is careful to explain that there will never be a way to "prove" this because the physical evidence is gone. On the other hand, he also makes the sensible observation that no 18th century woman would have entrusted the details of an affair to a letter. The Queen comes as close as possible with her extravagant protestations of love in letters that she never thought would see the light of day. When they did (thanks to a Fersen descendant) the compromising expressions were largely redacted. The unredacted versions have been published in this century, and for this reader at least they settle the question. This is a scholarly book, but Hardman's style is also sprightly, which I didn't expect after reading his biography of Louis XVI. Some of his acid observations made me laugh out loud. So there's that. Of interest to those who find the subject matter so, but the book is unlikely to change anyone's mind about the hapless Marie Antoinette. Either way.

A pleasurable read for me, but I certainly understand people who don't like this book. The plot is a shaggy dog, with constant winding trails that lead in directions that sound promising but ultimately either go nowhere or are unconvincing (the romance between Dorian and Zachery that turns out to be the heart of the book? Meh). But Morgenstern can write. It occasionally reads as though Donna Tartt had decided to take a crack at fantasy, but that's not a problem for me. On the other hand, much like The Goldfinch and The Little Child, The Starless Sea starts with an immaculate first chapter and then takes an inordinate amount of pages to circle back for the "aha!" moment. However, the prose is so seductive that I didn't mind, and it was fun finding the Easter eggs Morgenstern strews throughout the book. I am probably going to reread this in the next little while, because since I finished it two weeks ago I have found myself circling back around it once or twice a day.

Heartbreaking and beautifully written. During Roger Rees' last illness, his husband started sending out updates to their large circle of friends. After Rees died, Elice was encouraged to keep up the custom in order to help work through his own considerable grief. The book collects a potpourri of things --- the above mentioned letters, tributes to Rees at his memorial, letters Elice received from their friends and mementos of their life together. They met in a scene that would absolutely work as a rom-com and never really looked back. Rees was on Broadway in Nicholas Nickleby, and Elice fell in love with him watching the play from the balcony. By the time Rees left for England and The Real Thing they were a couple. The book is funny, charming (Elice is a playwright, and it shows) but also heartbreaking. Elice is never afraid to let the reader know how bereft he is without the love of his life. The thing that saves it from being mawkish (aside from the quality of the writing) is the emergence of Rees as someone it must have been a total pleasure to know. Somewhat self-effacing, talented, funny, sentimental and what more than one person quoted refers to him as, a mensch. The Elice family embraced him as another son, and Rees more than returned their love. It is incredibly moving to see photos of family gatherings with Roger Rees in the middle of a suburban New Jersey Jewish family (he converted). The love he felt for his in-laws is always written all over his face. I teared up once or twice. I recommend it to anyone, whether you are familiar with Rees or not. It will make you want to go back and rewatch as much of his work as is available; fortunately for us, that's a lot.

Hannah Pakula wrote a very good biography of the Empress Frederick, so I thought I would give this a read. Marie of Roumania survives today as the punch line in a Dorothy Parker limerick or as a footnote for those of us into the dynasties of the late 19th and early 20th century. She was the descendant of a Romanov (her mother was the only daughter of Alexander II), a Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (her father was Alfred, son of Albert and Victoria) and she married a Hohenzollern. At 17. Her mother despised the English and wanted "Missy" out of the country; the senior branch of the German Imperial Family was sitting on the throne of the new Kingdom of Roumania, so off the pretty, badly-educated teenager went to marry the jug-eared, dull Ferdinand, Crown Prince. Missy duly popped out six children, one of whom died as a toddler. Three of the others grew up to be world-class pests, while the other two wound up . . . not. Shortly after the birth of her last child, World War I broke out.

So far this could have been the life of Marie Antoinette Lite, but despite the similarities, Missy was temperamentally not cut out for the guillotine. While she was a total loss as a nurse (unlike Alexandra and her older daughters), she also (unlike Alexandra and Marie Antoinette) never tried to meddle in military matters. The goal of the war for Marie was to keep Roumania out of it, or at least for her country not to side with the Central Powers. She achieved her goal when Roumania went in on the side of the Entente. Unfortunately for Marie, Russia shortly succumbed to the Bolsheviks (curtains for many of her Romanov cousins) and Roumania was then immediately surrounded by Austria-Hungary, Germany and a Soviet state that declared war upon the hapless country. She was forced into a humiliating peace with Germany, mass starvation descended upon the land, and there was agitation for the overthrow of the dynasty. Despite all of this, Marie seems to have enjoyed the war. She spent every day zooming out and about, laden with whatever she could find. The Queen swept into field hospitals, peasant villages, wherever she could drive the Rolls, and distributed hope as much as anything. And her people loved her for it, as Marie would always girlishly admit. As Pakula presents her, Marie is the weirdest combination of narcissism and self-knowledge imaginable. At the end of the war, Roumania is being trounced at the Versailles Conference when its government comes up with the brilliant idea of sending Queen Marie off to charm everyone into giving her Transylvania. She blows over to Paris and by glory, Roumania gets Transylvania and a fair chunk of Bulgaria. Every morning while they were doing her hair, Marie listened patiently as her handlers fed information into the royal brain. Full to the brim with historical statistics, Marie donned one of the dozens of Parisian frocks she picked up along the way and set off for a different official's conference room. Only Woodrow Wilson was unmoved, although Mrs. Wilson seems to have become a fan.

It was the high point of her life. Ferdinand died in 1927, and her truly awful oldest son Carol seized the throne. Carol had left town earlier in a sort of proto-Harry and Meghan move, although unlike Harry he was simply wanting alone time with his mistress. Carol had renounced the throne in favor of his son by his legitimate wife, but pretty much as soon as Dad cooled he wanted back in. Once he achieved the throne, he made life hell for his entire family. Marie died in 1938, at least in part because Carol insisted upon only Roumanian doctors as diagnosticians.

The book never really takes off as a biography, because unlike the Empress Frederick, Missy was never an important political player. Pakula tries to inflate her subject's relevance, but . . . on the other, Pakula is a good writer who never fails to hold the reader's interest. 

I was a Benedictine monk for four years back in the 1970s. Nearly fifty years later, I would still rate my monastic life as critical to my formation as an adult. I enjoyed the book although parts of it were extremely frustrating. Maguire never can get a handle on why her subjects pursued the Carthusian vocation. Nor, save in one case, does she come to grips with why four of them left the Order --- or why one stayed in. The endings seem to come out of nowhere, and when she picks up the threads of their post-monastic lives, Maguire and the men themselves become strangely inarticulate. It seems clear that the vocations mattered to them but not why. It does not say anything negative about religious life to accept that there is a psychology behind it that attracts the devotee. Maguire never gives us any insight into the men as personalities. Which can make a kind of sense, I suppose, since the purpose of the hermit life is to die to self. Nor does the Parkminster community emerge with distinction. The young men (they were all young) were pretty much left to their own devices without much in the way of spiritual direction, or at least it appears that way in Maguire's version. The story is interesting, although I do wish she had managed to explain the attraction of a Carthusian lifestyle to people who have no natural religious sympathies for it. Still, if you do, you will enjoy the book. It provides a partial glimpse of a world not often seen by outsiders.

When Russia erupted into revolution, almost overnight the pampered lifestyle of the Imperial family vanished. Within months many of them were under arrest and they became "enemies of the Revolution and the Russian people." None of them wanted to leave Russia; they expected to be back on their estates soon and live as before. When it became obvious that this was not going to happen a few managed to flee, but others became dependent on foreign relatives for help. After 35 years researching and writing about the Romanovs, Coryne Hall considers the end of the 300-year-old dynasty, and the guilt of the royal families in Europe over the Romanovs' bloody end. Did the Kaiser do enough? Did George V? When the Tsar’s cousins King Haakon of Norway and King Christian of Denmark heard of Nicholas’s abdication, what did they do? Unpublished diaries of the Tsar’s cousin Grand Duke Dmitri give a new insight to the Romanovs’ feelings about George V’s involvement. 

Very well done. Nicolson examines the Battle of Trafalgar as a meta-event in the transition from the understanding of warfare and masculinity from 18th century gentility to the harder edges of the 19th century's British imperial expansion. He frames the story by placing the reader at a certain distance in miles and time as the opposing fleets draw closer. By the time the British and Combined Fleet clash, Nicolson has created the coherent picture that explains the battle. This applies to both its immediate consequence (Napoleon could not cross the Channel) and those effects that stretched into the future, and which were only dealt a deathblow by the trenches of World War I. Recommend.