"Solid, Engrossing and Beautiful"

A. Amber of Vive la Reine has reviewed Trianon on her Marie-Antoinette book blog, saying:

Trianon by Elena Maria Vidal is the story of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, told through a series of vignette-like chapters. The vignettes, through flashbacks and active events, flesh out the lives of the royal couple and their family throughout the revolution. Trianon is unique not only because of its format, but because it tells the story through many different and often underused points of view - you have a chapter from the perspective of an often neglected figure in fiction, Louis XVI's aunt who has retired to a convent; you have a chapter told from the point of view of Marie Antoinette's young daughter as she watches her parents at mass, etc. It's also unique in that it starts near the end of the couple's lives. Though it does have flashbacks to their youth, at the start of the novel, it's already the end of their world--the days of ballrooms and late nights in Paris are over, replaced by a devotion to children and state....

Vidal's writing is solid, engrossing, and beautiful. Some of the best parts of the novel are seemingly simple scenes, such as Marie Antoinette wandering the Trianon in heart ache after the death of her first son. These scenes are written with such poignancy and emotion that you really feel as if you are an invisible spectator at a moment in their lives. (Read entire review.)

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