Les Adieux à la reine

by Chantal Thomas

Voilà un premier roman pas comme les autres... D'abord parce qu'il ne s'agit pas du premier ouvrage de l'auteur. Chantal Thomas a déjà apporté aux lettres des études remarquables, notamment consacrées à Sade et à Thomas Bernhard, fouillant les limites de la littérature. Ensuite parce que Les Adieux à la reine dont l'action se déroule au XVIIIe siècle, n'est pas véritablement un confortable roman historique mais bien plus que cela. Qu'on s'explique : nous sommes en 1789. En trois jours, entre le 14 et le 16 juillet, l'Ancien Régime connaît la débâcle. Un effondrement rapide, sec, brutal et définitif, raconté heure après heure et a posteriori, vingt ans plus tard, par la lectrice de Marie-Antoinette, un humble et modeste personnage au service de la royauté, fasciné par la Cour, la grâce et la beauté de la reine. À travers elle, Agathe-Sidonie, enfermée dans son exil, se délivre donc la chronique d'une fin de monde : la reconstitution historique et minutieuse d'une société moribonde, cloîtrée dans sa bulle, qui ne voit rien venir et n'entend rien. Au fil des pages, subtilement, les portraits se découvrent, tout en nuances, entre bouffonneries et fuite piteuse, entre bons mots et débandade, sans manichéisme. Historienne et essayiste, Chantal Thomas réussit ainsi haut la main son entrée en littérature. --Céline Darner

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, France, Historical, French Revolution, 18th Century, Royalty

245 pages, Paperback

First published August 21, 2002

About the author

Chantal Thomas (born 1945 in Lyon) is a French writer and historian. Her 2002 book, Farewell, My Queen, won the Prix Femina and was adapted into a 2012 film starring Diane Kruger and Léa Seydoux.

Thomas was born in Lyon in 1945, and was raised in Arcachon, Bordeaux, and Paris. Her life has included teaching jobs at American and French universities (such as Yale and Princeton) as well as a publishing career. She has published nineteen works, including essays on the Marquis de Sade, Casanova, and Marie Antoinette.

In 2002, Thomas published Les adieux à la reine (Farewell, My Queen). The novel gave a fictional account of the final days of Marie Antoinette in power through the perspective of one of her servants. It won the Prix Femina in 2002, and was later adapted into the 2012 film Farewell, My Queen. The film stars Diane Kruger as the titular queen and Léa Seydoux as her servant Sidonie Laborde. Thomas co-wrote the screenplay,and it opened the 62nd Berlin International Film Festival. Helen Falconer of The Guardian called the work "a well written slice of history" with "evocative, observant prose," but criticized it for creating a narrator who "merely provides us with a pair of eyes to see through rather than capturing our interest in her own right." While disagreeing in its classification as a novel, Falconer did however add that Farewell, My Queen "generates in the reader a real sense of being a fly on the wall, eavesdropping on the affairs of the great and the not so good."

Thomas is currently the director of research at the French National Centre for Scientific Research.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Jan-Maat]

20th April 2025

I picked this up with the plan to read it again on holiday because it is a nice sized book that fits snuggly in my coat pocket, in the end I distracted myself by downloading the authoritarians and reading that in pdf.

In this book authority is falling away from the king. From the centre comes uncertainty, hesitancy and abrupt changed changes in the course of action.

The main character is Agathe-Sidonie Laborde , an exile in Vienna, remembering her last days at Versailles, an assistant reader to Queen Marie Antoinette. By which I mean she read a to the queen, not that she helps the Queen to read like a pair of human glasses , I assume there is was a principal or senior reader to the Queen as well.

For Agathe, the Queen is a siren, and she always remains enchanted by her,and effectively sacrificed her own life to her, in the world of Versailles which comes across as rather like Gormenghast. I enjoyed this portrait of the days around the fall of the Bastille. Versailles populated by characters all entranced by the siren song of monarchy, snobbish, with vlinked perceptions of the world beyond the court (If there is such a thing).

...

I saw the film (which has the same title as the book) first, but prior to seeing the film I had to check that the goodbye was not a goodbye to life, and that revolutionary violence was not going to be a visually significant aspect of the story. In the course of my brief researches I saw that the film was based on a book, that the author, Chantal Thomas, had assisted in writing the script, and that she had written a non-fiction book, or as I called it in a phase too blatant to be a Freudian slip, 'a serious book' about the affair of the pamphlets (when Marie Antoinette was accused in anonymous pamphlets of having a Lesbian affair with Yolande de Polastron, the Duchess of Polignac): The Wicked Queen: The Origins of the Myth of Marie-Antoinette.

It was a good film, I can recommend it, having seen it I was interested to read the book, and I was very happy to get a copy in my hands particularly because it is physically very pleasing, the proportions are just right for me - slightly narrower than a typical paperback, just as tall, and in a standard sized font. Further for a person who does not know much French, this novel begins in a very promising way: Je m'appelle Agathe-Sidonie Laborde...J'habite a Vienne... those phrases are among the first that we were taught in French at school however it rapidly becomes more complicated.

I feel this is a novel that I must read again partly because my French is not good and partly because things mentioned - not exactly revelations - towards the end of the book lead me to think differently about the beginning of the book, since though I am a bit tired by concentrating my way through the 240 odd pages of this novel, I will not reread it immediately. Concentrating means reading closely and in places reading several times, particularly when I couldn't remember what the bookmark indicated I had read the day before. I feel there is a danger therefore that I have over read and quite possibly I discovered a degree of sophistication that might not be there, which can happen when you stare at things for too long.

The narrator is the above mentioned Agathe-Sidonie Laborde (Sidonie in the film), she is a reader to Marie Antoinette -she is meant to be on hand to read appropriate texts to her Majesty rather like an audio-book. Agathe, or Agatha in English, the internet tells me means 'good', while Sidonie means 'from Sidon' - there is also a Sidonie in Penelope Fitzgerald's the blue flower which is set round about the same time. In this novel Mme Laborde, living in Vienna, recalls her last few days at the court of Versailles, from the 14th of July 1789. She is looking back from 12th February 1810 after the war of the fifth coalition, I don't want to bore you too much about that, but maybe I do - as part of the peace treaty ending that war Napoleon married his own Austrian Princess so in the background of the novel there is this sense of temporal patterns - things are repeating themselves when it is her 65th birthday so somewhat older than her character in the film version, a little older than the Queen but about the same age as the Duchess de Polignac most of the novel are her recollections of those last days, though she surfaces late in the novel in 1810 and the final pages take place in January 1811. So we are not experiencing vicariously in a novel living through those days around the storming of the Bastille, we are vicariously living through remembering living through those days around the storming of the Bastille.

The Queen is not present on the page that much, but her presence is felt, like gravity. Life at Versailles, and I guess in an ideal sense the country as a whole, orbits around the Royal family. Mme Larborde thinks of other courts arranged like Versailles which is one major European political centre after another so we have a strong sense of spatial patterns - everybody is doing the same things everywhere. This is an ordered world something that is reflected in the organisation of the text - Mme Laborde remembers things in days, and each day is broken down into hours, this is what happened hour by hour. The irony is that the same is not happening all across Europe. It is only in Paris that the Bastille is stormed, news of which filters through to the world of Versailles only slowly. The whole of her memory of the 14th of July is a kind of extension of Louis XVIth diary entry for that day - rien, he was commenting on the hunting, but it is the same at court, life is going on, there are no clouds in the sky. Then order clashes with disorder. The ordered world of Versailles orbiting around the Royal family must once have been a strength, suddenly it is a vulnerability.

Finally the Queen asks her favourite , Diane de Polignac to leave the country. For her safety Mme Laborde will wear her dress and pretend to be her, while de Polignac will pretend to be a servant. This is a the Versailles version of the ship of Theseus, except with a simple answer, if you wear the dress of the Duchess de Polignac you are the Duchess de Polignac, and if you are dressed as a servant you are a servant. There is no need for Mme Laborde to practise her role, or to learn anything, the dress, the surface, the superficiality, is enough.

It struck me watching the film that it was a story about unrequited love. There is possibly an unrequited love triangle; Mme Laborde longs for the Queen, who longs for the Duchess de Polignac, the Duchess sadly does not appear to complete the symmetry, sigh. Reading the novel I reflected that for the historian, ahem, the serious writer, writing a novel is also an expression of unrequited love, because however ever much you are entranced by a period of history or a person from history, that passion is never going to be returned.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not historical fiction. This is literary fiction. I could not put this down to save my life. After seeing the film, which was beautiful in its own regards, I had to purchase this (if only I read French well enough!). Both are incredibly different, and yet, incredibly enjoyable. And while the movie is delicious and glamorous, moving and one I cannot wait for on DVD, this has a beauty, life, and suspense to it that cannot be recreated on film. Agathe lives and breathes and in her own almost childlike way adores the Queen in such a way that you cannot help but feel a rush of emotions with every live. I recommend this both to Francophiles, history fans, those who adore mentions of the glamorous past, and lovers of literature alike.

[Jack Urquhart · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recently the UK’s Mail Online ran an article entitled, “Do you have Celebrity Worship Syndrome?” along with a quiz “to measure the reader’s ‘CWS’ symptoms”. One of the T/F quiz statements was, “I enjoy watching my favourite celebrity”; another read, “I have a special bond with my celebrity.”

The piece put me in mind of Chantal Thomas’s engrossing historical novel, Farewell, My Queen, which I’d just finished reading. The link in my thought loop can probably be traced to Thomas’s description of life at Versailles, circa 1789, on the eve of the French Revolution—a time when celebrity worship remained enshrined in decades-old court ritual; a place where courtiers never ceased obsessing over the high and mighty or stopped touting their connections to the court’s most celebrated residents, Louis XVI and his glamorous but vacuous Queen, Marie Antoinette.

To my mind, Thomas’s novel makes a good case that answering in the affirmative to any of the The Mail’s CWS quiz statements would have been as risky to body and soul in 18th century France as it would be practically anywhere today. One could argue, as perhaps Thomas intended, that mindless celebrity worship, especially when celebrity is undeserved or ill bestowed, was and is a waste of time and human potential. However, that premise, even if proven, would not lessen the appeal of Thomas’s fictional account of Marie Antoinette’s Versailles. Rather, Farewell, My Queen manages to be one of those guilty literary pleasures (the emphasis on ‘literary’ is intentional) akin to soaking up an especially well-produced episode (if there ever was such a thing) of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. That is because Thomas packs her novel with enough glamour, enough excess, enough suspense—enough insider information—to inspire fresh interest in a tale whose conclusion is no mystery.

It helps that, besides being a gifted writer, Thomas is well qualified to take on her subject. An expert in 18th century literature and a scholar of French history, she gets down to business quickly by introducing Agathe-Sidonie Laborde, the novel’s first-person narrator. An all but invisible court functionary, Laborde provides a fly on the wall perspective of the French Court during the early days of the revolution (Thomas adds a soupçon of irony by making her narrator a lowly “reader to the Queen”).

First encountered in 1810, some twenty years after the Queen’s execution, Laborde is living the life of an elderly exile in Vienna. Yet neither time nor distance can diminish the image of the woman she still calls “my Queen.” A dyed-in-the-wool royal groupie, Laborde begins her narrative by attempting to replace a queen known for her profligacy, who even at the height of her powers was deeply unpopular, with a rose-petal-pink goddess—kind, fragrant, beautiful, “a light that never goes out.”

That she fails in the attempt can be attributed to a classic case of mission creep.

Laborde’s starry-eyed portrait of Marie Antoinette as a beautifully turned out, gentle sovereign—a Queen who dispenses kindness to courtiers and servants alike—is richly detailed. Yet, the narrator’s idyll shatters when she begins to include the less savory aspects of court life. It turns out that one of the entrancing afternoons Laborde recounts—hours spent observing the Queen thumb the pages of a fashion magazine—occurred simultaneous to the storming of the Bastille. Likewise, the royal banquets Laborde describes (“four main courses, twenty side dishes, six joints of meat, fifteen regular desserts, thirty little desserts, a dozen platters of pastry…”) are either gobbled by the royals—or in the Queen’s case, picked over and discarded; meanwhile, ordinary French citizens starve to death. According to Laborde, even the gilded cages at the royal zoo house sickly, neglected animals.

And then there are the narrator’s memories of the palace itself, Louis XIV’s magnificent château famed for its Hall of Mirrors, for its richly appointed apartments, its priceless paintings and statuary. Laborde’s Versailles, however, is (literally) a seat of pestilence: its beautifully furnished rooms, infested by rats; its lavish gardens constructed upon reclaimed swamplands still swarming with mosquitoes. In fact, Thomas repeatedly invokes the château’s deceptive splendor as a metaphor for what ails the court and the country. Everywhere, it seems, there is decay and corruption lurking just below a pretty façade—a façade that is only a few days away from destruction.

Things go south in a hurry when King Louis XVI submits to the National Assembly and dismisses his foreign army.

Left unprotected at the wide-open château de Versailles, the courtiers panic as news of the countrywide riots spreads. The Paris mob is on the march, headed for the château, a list of “286 heads that have to fall” in hand. In short order, the freeloading nobility, like rats from a sinking ship, flee the palace.

But not Louis, the stout little man who never wanted to be King, who prefers forging locks in the royal smithy to the tedious rituals of the court and the incomprehensible duties of government. And not his (in)famous Queen.

In a final act of courage, the royal couple remains at Versailles to meet their fate.

Laborde narrates these final days paying particular witness to the frazzled and dazed Queen as she rallies to arrange the flight of her favorites, including Laborde herself, who eventually escapes to Switzerland.

The novel’s conclusion is sudden, providing little in the way of closure. But perhaps that is an appropriate narrative choice on the author’s part. In fact, it may be that Farewell, My Queen demonstrates how quickly things can come crashing down—no matter how celebrated, or deeply entrenched in seemingly unassailable ritual and/or culture.

Surely this remains a worthwhile aide-mémoire in the twenty-first century given how the powerful (and those who idolize them) are just as apt as ever to be blinded by the klieg light glare of celebrity. So disastrously blind, in fact, that sometimes they cannot discern how fragile is the foundation upon which their illusions rest.

___
Farewell, My Queen, by Chantal Thomas; First published in the U.S. 2003 by George Braziller, Inc.
Originally published in France 2002 by Éditions du Seuil under the title Les Adieux à la Reine.
___
Jack A. Urquhart is the author of several works of fiction, including the recently published short story, "They say you can stop yourself breathing".

[Ron Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

In high school, I learned that those who don't remember the past are doomed to repeat History in the summer. An affecting new novel about the French revolution, by Chantal Thomas, encourages me to hope that the day must not be far off when desperately bored students will storm the bastille of textbook publishers and usher in a new era of history education. It's time heads rolled, instead of resting on the desk.

"Farewell, My Queen," translated by Moishe Black, takes us to Versailles on July 14, 15, and 16, 1789, a particularly bad time to be caught playing croquet en haute couture.

Though 21 years have passed, Madame Agathe-Sidonie Laborde, a reader for Marie-Antoinette, can still recall those frantic 72 hours when news of revolt sent the decadent court royals scurrying away from their king and queen.

Thomas is a feminist historian who wrote a book in 1999 called "The Wicked Queen," which argued that the popular view of Marie-Antoinette is the result of "a misogynist demonization of woman's power." Offered critical jargon like that, most of us would rather eat cake, of course, but by analyzing revolutionary era pamphlets, Thomas demonstrated that the young queen imported from Austria never had a chance to defeat the prejudices arrayed against her.

"Farewell, My Queen," which won France's prestigious Prix Femina, is hardly an apology for Marie- Antoinette, but it's a fascinating portrayal of the truly bizarre world in which she lived and the way people cling to untenable positions in the face of violent progress.

The details surrounding Versailles are irresistibly symbolic for fiction, and Thomas strings them through this ominous narrative for maximum effect. A quarter of a mile long with 1,300 rooms, the spectacular palace sits in a fetid swamp that nauseates all the residents with the smell of rotting flesh. Armies of rats scurry through the halls at night chewing away at the furniture and clothing. Nonetheless, the aristocrats fortunate enough to orbit the reluctant king and queen carry on with the ceremonies of The Perfect Day, designed by Louis XIV a hundred years earlier. They live in the nucleus from which all power and fashion emanate, "the model par excellence toward which the eyes of every capital city were turned."

Madame Laborde begins determined to defend her beloved mistress against "a campaign of propaganda tending to stigmatize Versailles as a bottomless pit of needless expenses." At that impossible task, her testimony fails completely, but as a record of the way people react - or fail to react - to changes that threaten their lifestyle, this little book is an unsettling success.

Contrary to the crude portraits drawn by enemies, Laborde recalls Marie-Antoinette as a goddess of grace and compassion. Summoned to her side on the morning of July 14, she bows as the queen says, "How good of you to have walked all this way in order to come and read to me here at Trianon. I don't know how to thank you."

Wrapped in rapture at the queen's beauty, Laborde is, of course, a narrator of questionable reliability, but her guileless testimony provides a story steeped in dramatic irony. In her kindest descriptions, we can see the queen's pathetic triteness and desperate loneliness. She floats in a fog of privilege and artificial expectations, flattered into a state of intoxication, through which she can perceive none of the events around her clearly. Even when the severity of their situation rudely interrupts the Perfect Day, her effete husband and a sense of royal duty force her to abort an escape.

Like most of the royals and exalted servants at Versailles, Laborde has no real duties to perform, which places her in a perfect position to move around the palace, gathering shreds of gossip for a fascinating collection of vignettes that capture the peculiar characters residing at Versailles.

The king emerges as a dull-witted man trying to do right by his enflamed nation, but more interested in his new thermometer. The Captain-Custodian of the Menagerie is convinced that bathing would reduce his vital spirit, a practice that renders him a human stink bomb. In the bushes outside her window, an insane courtier has been stalking the queen for 10 years.

Having discovered their names on a list of royals to be executed, one family puts on a costume party in the dying light of Versailles. Even as beheadings begin in Paris, the court historian is sure that if he phrases a pastoral letter just right, the trouble will evaporate.

Ordinary events that shock Laborde give an eerie sense of how artificial this world is. For instance, on the morning of July 15, when they should all be running for their lives, the entire court is alarmed that someone dared disturb the king's sleep. And in one of the saddest scenes, Laborde expresses her horror at seeing Marie-Antoinette opening a door herself. Quel scandale!

But the most frightening moment isn't the arrival of an angry mob or even the surreal appearance of a bloody hag who storms through the palace like an angel of death. It's the silence, a never-before-heard stillness in the palace when all the peasants, workers, guards, attendants, secretaries, and minor royals have abandoned their king and queen - a haunting moment, perfectly captured, that conveys the tragedy of this collapse and its necessity.

Besides the novel's gorgeous and grotesque historical details, Thomas provides a provocative discussion about the burdens of this new sense of freedom consuming the nation.

It's comforting to imagine that the lessons here aren't relevant unless your peasants are demanding more bread, but Thomas has reenacted this earthquake in a way that should remind us all of the deadly cost of clinging to the past.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0612/p1...

[Janez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Les adieux à la reine est un roman sur la Révolution française naissante. La protagoniste, entichée de la reine Marie-Antoinette, représente une autre image de la Cour de France. Il ne s'agit plus d'un Versailles des nobles, avec le couple et la famille royale au sommet de la pyramide sociale. Devant les yeux du lecteur se dessine l'image d'un autre Versailles, d'un Versailles des subalternes, des couloirs et des passages secrets, connus seulment aux initiés. C'est pourquoi, à mon avis, ce roman n'est pas un roman de plus sur Marie-Antoinette. Oh non, il est bien plus. Il s'agit aussi de Versailles, ce lieu artificiel où Louis XIV a placé sa cour. Et comme Versailles a connu ses gloires, même avant le déménagement officiel en 1682, ce roman témoigne de sa déchéance. Un monde entier, privé du reste de la France, s'est effondré en quelques jours.
On assiste aussi à la montée de la panique parmi les nobles locataires du Château, au commencement de l'exil, à tout ce que Georges Lefevbre qualifiera plus tard comme La Grande Peur.

En 2012, le film avec le même titre a été tourné. Je l'ai vu, et maintenant j'ai aussi lu ce livre qui servait de base pour le film. Il y a entre les deux quelques discrépances. Lesquelles? C'est à chacun à découvrir pour soi-même!!

[Maggie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was absolutely brilliant. Given, I did pick it up once I had seen the movie trailer (but only because I didn't know it existed beforehand, for I am deeply attached to this particular era), but I came to like it for different reasons than I had been expecting. From a typically non -fiction author, this book is packed with facts and yet it still manages to flow. Once you begin the book you are taken through the sorted memories of a girl who was once Marie Antoinette's personal reader. You meet several lesser known but great personalities of Versailles as you get a sense of both the panic and the dismissal of the impeding danger. You are pushed through the events along with the girl. I would suggest you keep reading, even if you picked up the book to see Marie Antoinette's relationship with Gabrielle du Polignac, the beginning may be a little slow but the end is far from disappointing, in fact, I was crying with empathy as I squealed with exitement.

[Floflyy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Roman totalement immersif sur les 3 jours suivant la prise de la Bastille du point de vue de Versailles. La lectrice de la Reine nous plonge dans la Ville qu'est le chateau à l'époque avec ses odeurs, ses couleurs, sa vie, les fourmillements, les échos de Paris qui arrivent au compte goutte et la désillusion qui grandit de plus en plus.

Jusqu'au dernier moment, on n'ose y croire. La Bastille qui tombe semble être une mauvaise blague jusqu'à ce que l'on comprenne qu'il faut faire ses bagages pour quitter la France.

Roman assez lent dans lequel la plus de Chantal Thomas est toujours aussi enchanteresse que dans ses autres écrits, on retrouve la musique de ses phrases, les descriptions appuyées des décors, du décorum, des tenues, des mets. Innovant s'il en est de positionner cet événement majeur de l'histoire française du côté des nobles et de la cour, j'ai passé un très bon moment.

[Katie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have my doubts as to whether whoever wrote the review quoted on the cover calling this book "a racy, pacy story with a cast of rogues and villains" has in fact read it. It was neither racy, nor pacy, and the characters weren't fleshed out enough to be rogues and villains. In fact, it didn't really have characters at all, just figures who appeared as the narrative required. However, while I wasn't the slightest bit interested in the characters, least of all the insipid narrator, I was quite intrigued by the events she described. Chantal Thomas does an excellent job of portraying the downfall of Versailles, she just doesn't make you care about it.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read 'Farewell, My Queen' after seeing the sumptuous film adaptation. Although the film and book differ substantially in the details of how things unfold, they have the same basic structure and, crucially, the same atmosphere. This novel takes place as a memory of the last few days the main character, Sidonie, spends in the Palace of Versailles. After news of the fall of the Bastille reaches the royal family, life at Versailles unravels chaotically.

It was interesting to read 'Farewell, My Queen' as a counterpoint to my usual pro-Revolution reading. In 'City of Darkness, City of Light' for example, all the characters are excited and carried along by the Revolution, to varying degrees. To Sidonie, her friends, and her superiors, it is a wholly baffling and terrifying prospect, incomprehensible and destructive. They have no concept of the wider social and economic context, no point of contact with the bourgeois third estate deputies, no common understanding with those outside the Versailles bubble. The sense of stifling helplessness and confusion is very effective in this novel, helped by copious symbolism. Indeed, some characters appear only to be avatars of chaos or longing, possibly invented by Sidonie. Her narration is powerful, albeit clearly not reliable.

I enjoyed this novel as a snapshot of the French monarchy's collapse, but ultimately I prefer the pro-revolutionary perspective. Sidonie is immersed in the wasteful, ineffectual, archaic ritual of Versailles, the appeal of which to her seems to be grounded in her love for the Queen. Actually, her portrait of Versailles life reminded me of the Gormenghast trilogy.

On balance, I'd only recommend reading this novel after seeing the film. The combination evokes the atmosphere of dissolution and collapse effectively; each on its own is fairly slight and insubstantial. Moreover, the film is beautifully shot and brings out the relationship between the Queen and Gabrielle de Polignac more unequivocally than the novel.

[Mel Campbell · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the 2012 film adaptation of this novel, and looked it up online at the time. Somehow I still prefer the film's ability to conjure the atmosphere in the last desperate days of Versailles – perhaps it's a visual thing.

But what the novel does much better is to explain the ugliness of Versailles, which these days we experience as a place of luxurious, stately beauty. Thomas explains that it was built on a swamp, frequently smelled awful, made people ill and was overrun with vermin. And then there were the constant renovations; the place was always crumbling and under construction.

Thomas is great on the quotidian details of the ways in which courtiers lived and the rhythms of their days. Some of these I knew about, having researched the lever and coucher rituals for 'Out of Shape'; but others were new and interesting, such as the little apartments that courtiers lived in, and the way that lower-ranked courtiers would dine on leftovers from the King's vast banquets.

The palace wasn’t just a royal pleasure ground. It was its own world, which in turn shaped the identities of everyone within it. It was a vast, ideologically unified workplace – the Google or Apple or Facebook of its day – where ambitious, talented employees jostled for privileged positions near a charismatic CEO.

Now imagine this company’s key product has failed, its share price has plummeted, and angry investors and customers are descending on the campus, threatening its staff with violence. How would the staff react?

The book is quite vivid in its descriptions of how pathetically helpless the court became once servants and military guards began to abandon their posts and lose their fear and respect for the crown. The aristocrats are quite contemptible in their cosseted obliviousness to the genuine rage of ordinary citizens.

Despite being at the heart of the book, Marie-Antoinette seems quite inscrutable here. She's clearly not the blithe flibbertigibbet that republican gossip made her out to be; but nor do we really glimpse what she's really feeling, and what sort of person she is. I feel like the film did a much better job of fleshing her out.

However, Gabrielle, the Duchesse de Polignac – who in the film was represented as quite sly, manipulating the Queen's helpless love for her – here seems much more guileless. And it's the duchess's intimidating, politically wily sister-in-law Diane who's represented here as the Polignac puppetmaster.

The novel lacks the documentary immediacy of the film; instead it has a bitter, hollow, elegiac tone because it's being narrated by an old woman, from long-ago memory. The overarching vibe is of pointlessness – what was all this for? What do these lives and experiences mean?

Sidonie does not emerge as an especially insightful protagonist; I found her later life, spent living in the shadow of her glittering Versailles career, pretty depressing – although that's probably the author's intention.

[Drea85 · Rating 4 out of 5]

High quality historical fiction with a gender touch. The former reader of Marie Antoinette evokes the last days of royal life in Versailles and, thereby, laments the passing of the Ancien Régime. What distinguishes this novel from the multitude of fiction concerned with 'Great Women in History' is the amount of historical facts invested and the beautifully ambivalent atmosphere created by the author. Instead of focusing on common stereotypes about the people and the places of glorious France before the Revolution, Thomas illuminates the daily routines of a place lingering between reality and a dreamworld consciously created by its inhabitants. These, however, appear as secondary to the plot. The real star of the novel is Versailles. The castle is at once directly described, characterized by little anecdotes, and mapped by the episodic recollections of a woman at once resident and outsider. The reader experiences the last fatal hours of an age through her eyes, yet the author succeeds in keeping the descendant's point of view in mind. She exposes the absurdity of the feudal system in it's last days, the pointlessness of a society centered on nothing but empty ritual, and, yet, bemoans the passing of the bliss it held for a privileged few. Though the enchanted atmosphere is due to the narrator's nostalgic longing for her youth, it also serves to highlight the deficiencies of our contemporary times by making us aware that the French Revolution did not only make equals of us all but also replaced the old gods with with the far less glamorous and magical deity Mammon.

[Sammy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was supposed to read this for my degree 14 years ago (oops). I recently gave it another try and I’m so glad I did.

This is one of those historical novels which tries to place you in a moment, rather than fully chronicle historical events. That moment is the gradual unravelling of life at Versailles in the three days after the storming of the Bastille, as the French court awaits its downfall.

Our narrator is an Assistant Reader to Queen Marie Antoinette, one of Versailles’ many non-jobs; essentially a nobody whose access to the Queen and the court is only in glimpses and occasional encounters. That limited perspective is perfect, as the theme of ignorance permeates the book.

From their closeted position at Versailles, the court can only guess what is happening in the outside world and what fates await them. We all know, of course. But this book doesn’t get that far. There is no violence and terror here, not yet at least. It’s essentially a compelling psychological study of the panic precipitated by rumour and speculation, and how the court begins to spectacularly unravel.

Also available in English as Farewell, My Queen.

[Mohamed · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5*

[Bridget · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was given to me by a friend. The story is told from the perspective of a woman who is the Reader to the Queen, Marie Antoinette. The story is remembered from the perspective of 1810, in Vienna, and covers the story of the last days of the court at Versailles in 1789, when the French Revolution started.

This was an interesting read, as it was told from the perspective of someone who is part of the court, but not one of the higher ranking indviduals. Marie Antoinette is presented as a woman who is one person to the public, and another - more caring - person to those who are directly in her orbit.

I found this to be an interesting book, since others I have read about this time were written from the perspective of history, automatically condemning Marie Antoinette. This time, we are given a queen who is more approachable, even if she, and the other royals, have no real understanding of the average person's existence. They are presented as people who were raised with the strong belief that they were not ordinary, and knew what was right for the population at large.

The book covers the dates of July 14 through July 16, when the last members of the court leave Versailles. It is a fascinating story of the hierarchy of those serving the king and queen, and the sort of amazement that the characters feel when they realize they are dealing with those "below" them. For instance, this passage:

"Close the gates: very well, but who would go out and give orders to that effect? It was for the King to give such comnands. Before daybreak. But how could he be reached? It would be best if one of us went instead. The mole catcher volunteered. It was unanimously agreed that, however great might be the chaos confronting us, a mole catched could not the bearer of a royal order."

This is what the main character is thinking. Meanwhile, I'm thinking, "There was a MOLE CATCHER as part of the court?????"

The book is not necessarily high and mighty literature, but it is very readable and very interesting.

[Aude · Rating 3 out of 5]

J'ai globalement bien aimé ce livre, surtout la façon dont il est écrit, on rentre dans l'intimité de Versailles de Marie-Antoinette, on apprend à aimer cette reine publique. Vu la période, on a plutôt tendance à s'intéresser à ce qui se passait du côté du peuple, et ce livre se déroule du côté de la cour de Versailles, et c'était intéressant de voir ce point de vue, même s'il s'agit d'une fiction. Le plus frappant a été le passage où la prise de la Bastille est perçue comme un pur canular, comme si une telle chose ne pouvait absolument pas arriver... Mais j'ai aussi été un peu déçue, je m'attendais à beaucoup plus "d'action", à ce qu'il se passe beaucoup plus de choses, vu la période utilisée. On suit surtout les sentiments de la narratrice, Agathe, et il faut dire qu'à part admirer Marie-Antoinette et lui faire la lecture, écouter les quelques ragots autour d'elle, elle ne fait pas grand chose, elle est réservée, timide, mais aussi touchante. Cependant, j'ai trouvé qu'elle n'apportait pas énormément au livre, certes j'ai bien aimé cette intimité avec elle à certains passages, le fait de connaître son point de vue, c'était comme faire partie du cercle privé de la reine, et de vivre à cette époque.

Je crois surtout que j'attendais trop de ce livre, je m'étais fait trop d'idées aux vues des critiques, et en le lisant j'ai été un peu déçue. Il reste un très bon livre, vraiment excellent du point de vue de l'écriture, bien que les descriptions soient un peu trop présentes à mon goût, mais cela permet de nous plonger pleinement dans le Versailles de la révolution et de ses décors chargés. Petit point positif en plus : j'ai vraiment apprécié que l'histoire commence en 1810, et donc avec une Agathe plus âgée, petit détail, mais qui vaut tout de même son importance dans le récit.

[Sean]

After a slow introduction (the narrator is looking back on the now-distant past), it's dreamlike and surreal. The dialogue could almost come from an old play--I mean that in a good way. The unmoored, unspooling social landscape begins to resemble allegory.

Unfortunately, it really starts to bog back down towards the end--turns out it would have been fine to have abandoned it when I started to lose interest (as is so often the case), though the scene when they actually leave Versailles picks back up, and is where I wish the author had stopped.

[Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book started with a lot of promise: terrific writing, rich characters and setting, a unique perspective. But then halfway through the story just seemed to get lost. The ending was inevitable and there just didn't seem to be enough movement in the story to bother riding it along the way. This was a fun and quick read, but overall just not as interesting and captivating as I had hoped at the beginning.

[Lindsey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Told entirely from the perspective of Marie-Antoinette's reader, this story illustrated the confusion and panic that reigned in Versailles in the aftermath of the taking of the Bastille. The theme was confusion as she went between friends and her duties to the queen to discover what the real dangers were to the inhabitants of the palace. It made for an odd narrative because she was so disconnected from the actual events.

[Azazou · Rating 2 out of 5]

Le livre est certes court, mais ma lecture m’a semblé interminable. Je n’ai eu aucun attachement pour le personnage principal, très froid et distant. Le style d’écriture ne m’a pas plu car il était lent et ampoulé. Malgré le thème qui m’intéressait, je suis déçue par ce roman.

[Anna Toffoletto · Rating 2 out of 5]

Amidst the frivolities and various gossips of the Versailles court, this sort of historical novel certainly shows well the French Revolution of 1789 as seen from above, but paints a very dull and heavy picture for my taste.

[Laura Jelenkovich · Rating 4 out of 5]

Meraviglioso. Ogni volta che leggevo la parola Reine potevo sentire l'amore infinito, la passione triste dell'autrice per Maria Antonietta. Ed anche la mia.

[Shannon · Rating 1 out of 5]

I got about a third in... Does not hold my attention & normally I love anything with kings & queens.

[Andria · Rating 2 out of 5]

A very well written book about the last days of Versailles. Interesting historical detail. Lovely prose. I just wish the actual story itself and characters hadn't been so dull 🙁 I did make it through the whole book, but this was a slow, rough journey.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Abandoned but I read enough to give myself credit.

[Jason Furman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Farewell My Queen has some great writing, some great scenes, some great impressions, but much of it is dull and uneven.

It recounts, almost hour-by-hour, Versailles on July 14th-16th 1789. The first day is a normal one as courtiers and servants do what courtiers and servants do. The second day begins with the residents learning that the King was awoken in the middle of the night to be told about the Bastille. By the third day everyone is making plans to flee and the monarchy appears to be over.

The story is told in flashbacks from the perspective of then-young woman who was a backup reader to Marie Antoinette. Her flashbacks are largely a series of people she interacted with and scenes she witnessed, like the animal keeper lamenting the death of his animals, the official court historian who is on volume 7 of his history, the man in charge of the household who is being ignored as everyone flees, and several other characters. The depiction of Marie Antoinette wandering around alone, knocking on doors and attempting--without success--to enter them is particularly moving, as Chantal Thomas explains that these are the first times she has even touched a door. It is interesting to understand that there is something infantile about the kings and queens who were helpless without people doing even the basic things for them.

It starts out telling all of these events in a witty and amusing manner. But then the method of telling does not sustain interest for the entire book, although it picks up again at the end when everyone is fleeing Versailles.

[Angie Fehl · Rating 2 out of 5]

Whether you like her or not, it's hard to deny that there is something fascinating about Marie Antoinette. I'm definitely a sucker for any books about her! This one had the extra booknerd-y pull of being a novel written around a young woman chosen to be the personal reader to the queen, a position that allows said young woman a front row seat to the luxe life of Versailles. I found the idea of this to be a potentially really interesting perspective!

Translated from the original French by Moishe Black, this novel was an international bestseller and winner of the Prix Femina Award. Given all that, I figured I was in for one heck of a read. It was not to be for me. Maybe something was lost in translation? There were things I did appreciate about the novel. At one point in the story it discusses the fetid, unkempt state of Versailles before the arrival of Marie Antoinette, something I had never read of before, so while I was a little grossed out by the descriptions, I was also a little fascinated by that portion.

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

The historical interest and point of view-as Versailles society disintegrates and you witness it in the lives of the servants and lower nobility-are great, but there isn't enough character development of the narrator for her to be believable. She's supposed to be near 40 in 1789 and it reads like she's a simpering, wide-eyed adolescent. Perhaps because the author is a historian (or perhaps something was lost in translation), while the plot unfolds well, I just couldn't make myself care about the characters, and there wasn't enough about the vast menagerie of other characters to distinguish them one from the other, except for a few like the zookeeper, who is well developed and then never appears again.

[Robert Palmer · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Queen in question is Marie-Antoinette as told by one of her readers,she had a reader because she didn't care to read. The time peroid is the first three days of the Freanch revaluation starting with the storming of the Bastille in Paris and how the people staying at Versilles reacted to the events. It was only three days but reading seemed like three weeks and at the end I was happy to say " farewell my Queen"

[Val B-t · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beau récit des derniers moments à Versailles pendant la révolution française. On y comprend l'ambiance vécue da s CE fameux châteaux, les habitudes de ceux qui y vivaient (grassement) et le respect indéfectible que les gens portaient à la royauté en ce temps. On se perdait parfois un peu dans les descriptions et dans le langage un peu vieillot plus difficile à comprendre, mais ça reflète bien l'époque.

[Aurélie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Après avoir lu l'Echange des princesses, j'ai eu envie de lire Les Adieux à la Reine. J'avais vu le film de Benoît Jacquot au moment de sa sortie, et il m'avait beaucoup marqué. J'ai retrouvé dans le livre la même atmosphère de déliquescence des jours qui ont suivi la prise de la Bastille. J'aime vraiment les romans de Chantal Thomas car elle décrit le vrai Versailles, tel un village surpeuplé de 3000 habitants...