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    Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette
    Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette
    Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette
    Audiobook11 hours

    Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette

    Written by Sena Jeter Naslund

    Narrated by Susanna Burney

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    Marie Antoinette was a child of fourteen when her mother, the Empress of Austria, arranged for her to leave her family and her country to become the wife of the fifteen-year-old Dauphin, the future King of France. Coming of age in the most public of arenas, she warmly embraces her adopted nation and its citizens. She shows her new husband nothing but love and encouragement, though he repeatedly fails to consummate their marriage and in so doing is unable to give her a child and an heir to the throne. Deeply disappointed and isolated in her own intimate circle, and apart from the social life of the court, she allows herself to remain ignorant of the country’s growing economic and political crises, even as poor harvests, bitter winters, war debts, and poverty precipitate rebellion and revenge. The young queen, once beloved by the common folk, becomes a target of scorn, cruelty, and hatred as she, the court’s nobles, and the rest of the royal family are caught up in the nightmarish violence of a murderous time called “the Terror.”

    Sena Jeter Naslund offers a dramatic reimagining of this truly compelling woman that goes far beyond the popular myth.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateOct 3, 2006
    ISBN9780061230660
    Author

    Sena Jeter Naslund

    Sena Jeter Naslund is a cofounder and program director of the Spalding University (Louisville) brief-residency MFA in Writing, where she edits The Louisville Review and Fleur-de-Lis Press. A winner of the Harper Lee Award and the Southeastern Library Association Fiction award, she is the author of eight previous works of fiction, including Ahab's Wife, a finalist for the Orange Prize. She recently retired from her position as Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Louisville.

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    Reviews for Abundance

    3.5/5

    418 ratings38 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Fascinating book about Marie Antoinette; I'd like to read more about her.
    • 5/5
      I just got back from Paris and Versailles and I had to read something about Marie Antoinette. This was such a great book and I never knew that the majority of her time spend in France was at Versailles. The book gave a different side of Marie Antoinette and it didn't portray her as the cold hearted bitch I've always read about. I think the author sought to show that she really was a nice person.
    • 4/5
      Even though I knew the ending, I still cried. That is the power of Naslund's writing.I learned a great deal about the French Revolution that I had probably studied in high school but forgot, plus this novel brought to life the various relationships that are so meaningless when listed in history books.I recommend it to anyone with even the slightest interest in history.
    • 5/5
      I really enjoyed reading about Marie Antionette. The author does a great job with details without boring you to tears.
    • 4/5
      This was truly enjoyable book. The edition I read contained information about the author's research sources and an interview with her as well. The first person perpective from the experience of Marie Antoinette was very humanizing. The style and description of the surroundings, especially the works of art was so pleasant - I cannot understand what a previous reviewer found so appalling. The contrast between the Queen's professed love for the people and desire to be kind to them is quite in contrast to her seemingly utter lack of understanding that she herself is the source of many of the financial woes that beset the nation, yet she remains a sympathetic character. A worthy read!
    • 3/5
      This is a fictional account of Marie Antoinette’s life, as she moved from being a princess in Austria to the queen of France before the French Revolution overthrew the French monarchy. I listened to the audio and it just didn’t draw me in much, so since I was often distracted, I did miss much of it. I have read only one or two other books on Marie Antoinette. I found some of the vocabulary used in the book a bit… “pretentious”? I can’t think of a good word – “high-falutin’”? (LOL!) I suppose pretentious works. That certainly didn’t help get me more interested. I am still rating it ok, as it did pick up a bit toward the end during the Revolution. I did find interesting what happened to Marie and Louis’ son and daughter after their parents were put to death. I likely did read of that previously, but I had forgotten.
    • 3/5
      It's amazing how much I learned reading this book. There was very little I knew about Marie Antoinette, the French throne, the Austrian throne, and the political intrigue between the two.
    • 5/5
      I LOVED this book. Marie Antoinette's story as the ultimate scapegoat is an unbelievably sad one. I like to think this book captures her spirit, and the bewilderment she must have felt as everything came violently crashing down around her. Imagine how afraid she must have been for her children! That too, comes through.
      The novel is well written, and the events of her life flow along without confusing the reader. I finished reading it last night and it is still with me this morning. It is for this reason I give it 5 stars.
    • 4/5
      I did not like this book when I read it, but came to truly appreciate it after book club discussion!!!! Written in the first-person and such that the reader (namely ME) becomes frustrated with Marie's ignorance of the plight of her adopted countrymen and her willful (selfish?) intention to not wisen up to what is happening within her husband's kingdom. THEN, came to understand the ingeniousness of the author's use of first person!! This is the best use of first-person I've read - to get into the mind of this shallow woman! Initally a 2-star review, changed to 4-star because of the meaningful use of first-person.
    • 4/5
      sympathetic portrayal of a young queen's almost unconscious descent into frivolity, a Marie Antoinette apologist's manifesto
    • 4/5
      Just finished this book last night. The ending stuck with me for a while last night, because we all know how her story ends.....the book begins with a young Marie at 14, as she tells her own story, of the fear & wonder & pride of being sent to France to marry the Dauphin who would become the King on the death of his grandfather. She tells frankly the problems of her husband's unwillingness to consummate the marriage until they are older, which very much surprised me, but they were only 14 & 15 respectively, so it becomes understandable. It also touches on his medical issue that makes it painful for him to do it at all, which explains his reluctance in that department, & even goes on to say that they had a discussion with the court physician about an operation that would help that, which I can only presume was a form of adult circumcision. However, once they were able to get past that barrier, several YEARS later, they had their 4 children, sadly of which none survived to carry the direct bloodline down the generations.The book was sympathetic to Marie's life, & painted a completely different portrait of her than the one that most history does. From the author's countless hours of research, & the research of those before her, they were able to completely disprove the "let them eat cake" statement that has been wrongly attributed to her for centuries. That statement was made by a Queen of France, yes, but the one that preceded Marie by about 100 years. So, Marie was ultimately not the cold, heartless, vain, spendthrift Queen that history made her out to be. Yes, the spendthrift part she was, but never the rest. In the book, she never once refers to herself as beautiful, she always says it was her sister that was the beautiful one.In all, this was a touching account, full of sad, tragic moments, as well as beautiful ones. I don't know how true the tales are of Marie & Count Von Fersen, but in the book, she stayed faithful to the King, up to her last thoughts as she lay on the block....
    • 1/5
      I dipped into Ahab's Wife and just couldn't get into it, but I thought it was just beause I was in the middle of moving halfway around the world. Abundance had such great reviews that I was willing to give Naslund another go. Nope, being waist-deep in boxes had nothing to do with my dislike of the author. Prententious clap-trap-- her ever so poetic words just glide (or should I say crawl) along the surface of things with no emotion, no action. Since I know (yes, we ALL know) how Marie-Antoinette's story story ends, I felt no guilt about skipping to the final pages. News flash--even someone as fashion conscious as the queen was probably not thinking about her plum-heeled shoes as she climbed the scaffold.

      Every book, of course, is filtered through the author's sensibilities, but when the narrative is first person and instead of getting the queen's thoughts I am receiving I'm-so-special transmissions from the author--well, it kind of gets between me and the story. Read the Queen's Confession instead. It's relentlessly middle-brow, but you can get a real feel for Marie-Antoinette and her era.
    • 4/5
      With this book I got into the head of Marie Antoinette. The author did all the research and based on the known facts delivered what she thought was going on in Marie Antoinette's head. She convinced me. At the end of the book is a list of source material, "A Brief Timeline of Events" and an interesting conversation with the author. Don't skip this; it is really good.The historical facts are clearly presented. You follow Marie from her coming to France as a naïve fourteen year old to her death at the guillotine. Toinette, as she is affectionately called by those close to her, has been maligned by history; I appreciated hearing a more balanced view. I empathized with her. I saw how she matured. I really did suffer with her when she couldn't become pregnant, through no fault of her own. That struggle felt very real to me, and when her husband, the Dauphin, finally did become aroused the author's lines beautifully portray the conception. You understood why before she had turned to gambling and frivolity. Quite simply, I like the sensual writing. I like the clear presentation of the historical facts. Never are they boringly presented. I believe we see here Marie Antoinette's view of what happened around her in the years leading up to her death. For me, only through empathy with historical characters does history become meaningful. **********************After 20 pages: Some authors fit some readers. I very much like how this author writes. Mmm mmm, good stuff. I like the descriptive lines. I feel that I am in young Antoinette's head. I see her world from her point of view. This author studies the known facts and does not change them. Antoinette did not say, when told that the people of eighteenth century France were starving, "If they have no bread then let them eat cake!", and consequently that is not to be found in this book. What is found are the lines she did say. I have stupidly put off reading this book b/c royalty and historical fiction so often disappoint me.
    • 3/5
      I love this author's work, so I looked forward to borrowing this e-book from my local library. Unfortunately, it's writing is stilted and unbelievable. I had a difficult time following the plotline because of the vagueness and stilted writing, so I just gave up and read about Marie Antoinette on Wikipedia--quite shameful.
    • 4/5
      “Finished this book last night (February 7) and I was crying in my bed. I really felt for this woman and her family.
      It took me a while to finish , some parts were a bit boring but all in all I thought it was a very beautiful tale. I have always been interested in Marie Antoinette and when I began reading this book I had even added Jean Plaidy's book about her on my wish list (which I'd already read years ago and I still have the Dutch translation (Horrible!!!) by the way) and was on the verge of buying it. But then I remembered how sad her story was and decided not to and i am glad. her story makes me too sad and I was so angry at the stupid barbaric French as I called them last night. lol. I know they were not the only ones back then.
      ”

    • 5/5
      Fascinating book about Marie Antoinette; I'd like to read more about her.
    • 4/5
      This was Marie Antoinette in a much different light than we learned about her in school. In the forward Naslund even says how Marie Antoinette was claimed to have said and done things for years that were either unsubstantiated or just plain false.Abundance is the kind of book you start reading and suddenly realize you've read 40 or 50 pages. I think the best thing about the book is how richly everything is described, you can easily picture everything Marie Antoinette would have seen, in all its splendor and glory. I loved that a major part of the story was told through her letters to her mother and family, it really gave a much better picture than any story could have. The only thing I really didn't like was how quickly the book ended. Her entire imprisonment was shrunk down to the last 50 or so pages, after reading about her life in France I wish she would have put more about her last few months.
    • 5/5
      Pretty amazing book written from the perspective of Marie Antoinette. I listened to this on audiobook and the reader did an excellent job of portraying the character. Overall an excellent read if you enjoy historical fiction.
    • 2/5
      Fascinating story, terrible writing. I almost stopped reading it several times because it's just so overwrought and the metaphors are so downright bizarre.
    • 4/5
      Abundance chronicles the tale of Marie Antoinette from her arrival in France until her execution during the French Revolution. Abundance focuses on the court of Versailles and the luxurious life lived there by Marie Antoinette and her family, with the poverty of French peasants and the perilous fiscal situation of the French monarchy as little more than sideshows. While this perspective does little to delve into the reasons and causes of the French Revolution, it is true to the lifestyle pursued by the royal court and likely gives a sense of the world inhabited by Marie Antoinette.
    • 4/5
      I chose this book without reading any reviews because I "Ahab's Wife" is one of my favorite novels. It has taken me awhile to get to it but a book club chose to read it whichgot me started. I was not disappointed. I have read to the Scaffold and parts of Antonia Fraser's biography on Marie Antoinette, but "Abundance" allowed me to feel the the personality of her (be it real or fiction) and how her upbringing and expectations of her position allowed her to not see the poverty of much of France and how outrageous her expenditures were. She was a child-woman always wanting to please and to gain the love of everyone around her. You have to read carefully to see Toinette's faults and understand how much of a fantasy world she lived in. Naslund is very understated and only through her language and writing does the "real" story emerge. Although the world knows the ending, I found myself hoping that the family would make their escape and my disappoinment was real when they did not, that is how real the story became to me. I would recommend this book, but also encourage a reading of other books (especailly Fraser's) to not have a one-sided account of all that was happening in France during those years.
    • 4/5
      Although this book feels a little "girlish" I quite enjoyed it. It is told in the first person, ie, it is Marie Antoinette telling her story, so yes it is from a woman's point of view. I enjoyed the second half more as the monarchy begins to crumble. Though I know the story well, it added to my knowledge. The King didn't seem like he really wanted to rule and perhaps that is why he wasn't a good ruler. He comes off as indecisive. He prefers to spend hours with his books rather than tending to affairs of state. He is solitary in contrast to Marie Antoinette who is social. They both lose touch with their public. MA does do things that are over the top that are bound to offend the public who were heavily taxed, yet hungry. MA did not really say "let them eat cake". It is worth the detour if you can tolerate the syrupy first half. I have the Kindle version.
    • 4/5
      Abundance, A Novel of Marie Antoinette by Sena Jeter Naslund to me was like the French Court at that time, lavish, opulent and rich but yet out-of-touch, shallow and frivolous. I felt that I never really got to the core of the person, this felt like a overview of the French Queen rather than a real person’s story.Written with vivid detail on fashion, clothing, and the day-to-day ceremony that the King and Queen lived their lives with, one certainly understood the distance the monarchy had placed between themselves and the French people. Marie Antoinette herself comes across as a charming, sincere, yet vain and hedonistic woman who really had no idea what life was like for her subjects. She was as she was raised to be, a royal princess to become a queen. Had she become the Queen at a different time in France’s history, she probably would have been most beloved. Unfortunately, during their rule, popular opinion saw her husband, Louis XVI as weak and stupid, whereas she was portrayed as amoral, self-indulgent and a foreigner meddling in state affairs that she should have no concern with. This King and Queen did not bring about the French Revolution on their own. Years of terrible economic conditions, the hardship and harshness of life for common people, the lack of funds in the royal treasury that had been bled for generations, and a nobility that refused to even consider any type of reform all lead to this epic event. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants a general overview of Marie Antoinette’s life as the book is certainly interesting and easy to read. For me, I wanted a little more depth, a deeper look at the woman herself.
    • 1/5
      So you already know the basic storyline. With Marie Antoinette herself as the narrator, this is a terribly sympathetic view of her life. Poor thing never did figure out why the French decided to lop off her head. The book generally kept my interest and I did learn some things about that period in history, but I was really ready for her to meet the guillotine by the end.
    • 4/5
      Enjoyable and well written. The Queen still comes off as narcissistic and petty, but the history is thorough and the language flows in all of the flowery and pastel hues of Rococo art. (I did almost cry at the end.)
    • 5/5
      This is a great book! It lends a different perspective of Marie Antoinnette. It was simpathetic to her but it also revieled how boring court life could be and that the frivolities were mostly all they had to ammuse themselves with. It was an interesting historical fiction novel because it was written from her point of view. I thought that it was an interesting book. I recomend it to anyone who is interested in history and not just facts.
    • 2/5
      I got this one at Book Expo as an advanced copy. It was a great read! I was a little bit crazy about Marie Antoinette for awhile, so I tore through it. I also remember reading it on the couch while the entire family was sick with the flu. I read and helped kids puke in the bathroom...too much information...
    • 4/5
      Mon Dieu! About two-thirds of the way through this book and I was ready to cut her head off myself! I get the impression that the author was sympathetic to Marie Antoinette, but she sure comes across as one self-absorbed, spoiled, immature brat in its pages. Certainly by the last 100 pages I felt for the woman, but honestly her materialism never wavered and I did get tired of hearing about how amusing she found her own thoughts and comments. Not sure if she said "Let them eat cake!" or not, but this novel did nothing to make me believe that she wouldn't!
    • 4/5
      This is a strong historical novel, impeccably researched and told completely in the first person, which is a bit risky,considering that the subject in question is Marie Antoniette and it covers her last 24 years. Overall, I feel it works and would recommend it.
    • 5/5
      I just got back from Paris and Versailles and I had to read something about Marie Antoinette. This was such a great book and I never knew that the majority of her time spend in France was at Versailles. The book gave a different side of Marie Antoinette and it didn't portray her as the cold hearted bitch I've always read about. I think the author sought to show that she really was a nice person.