Tea at Trianon: A City of Broken Glass

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, November 10, 2012

A City of Broken Glass

In this fourth installment in the Hannah Vogel series, Rebecca Cantrell continues the adventures of the spy and journalist which dramatize the rise of Nazism in the years leading up to World War II. Determined to stay out of trouble, Hannah has traveled to Poland to write a fluff piece, accompanied by her twelve year old son, Anton. However, she encounters some Jewish prisoners recently deported from Germany, among whom is Miriam, the wife of her old friend, Paul. When Hannah discovers that Paul’s toddler daughter has been left behind in a cupboard in Berlin, her new odyssey begins. Hannah soon finds herself captured by the Gestapo, only to be rescued by Lars, her former lover, who she thought had died in Russia. As she eludes the Nazis in the streets of Berlin, she finds that the city of her youth has been transformed into a place of dread and hopelessness. She is troubled by the anti-Semitic laws and does not think the persecution can get any worse, but in that she is mistaken. With compelling characters and a narrative which makes it hard to put down, A City of Broken Glass combines romantic thriller with historical tragedy.

This review was originally published in the November 2012 edition of the Historical Novels Review.

(*NOTE: This book was sent to me by the Historical Novel Society in exchange for my honest opinion.)

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