Porcelain Dove - Hardcover

Sherman, Delia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0525936084 ISBN 13: 9780525936084

Publisher: Dutton Adult, 1993

Synopsis

Berthe Duvet, chambermaid to a French duchess, narrates this tale of eighteenth-century Paris, describing the dazzling world of Marie Antoinette, Beaumarchais, and the Marquis de Sade, already living in the shadow of the guillotine. 35,000 first printing. $35,000 ad/promo. BOMC.

About this title

About the Author

Delia Sherman teaches writing at Northeastern University.

Reviews

Fantastic in every sense of the word, Sherman's ( Through a Brazen Mirror ) second novel is a skillfully crafted fairy tale that owes as much to E.T.A. Hoffman as to Charles Perrault. The time period hardly matters: for 200 years, the chateau of Beauxpres in the Juras has been removed "from the circle of the world." Its inhabitants, who are provided for by nearly invisible servants, never age and never leave. How and why this happened is the heart of the story recorded by the sensible, courageous and forever loyal, Berthe Duvet. Berthe's story really begins in 1758, when she first becomes femme de chambre to the young Adele du Fourchet, and follows/guides her rather giddy mistress through school at Port Royal to her eventual marriage to the duke of Malvoeux. Soon Berthe, Adele and the duke leave Paris for the duke's ancestral home, the magical and menacing castle of Beauxpres. Like his ancestors, the duke has inherited both a mania for collecting (in his case, birds) and a particularly grizzly curse, which, combined with the realities of the French Revolution, intrude upon Adele's sheltered world. Although the title and some 'tis-ing and 'twas-ing may seem twee, The Porcelain Dove is no dainty vertu but a seductive, sinister bird with razored feathers. BOMC alternate.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Combining history, fairy tale, and period literary fashions, Sherman (the paperback Through a Brazen Mirror) offers a sprawling 18th-century epic that could be improved with some 20th-century editing. The narrator is the loyal no-nonsense Berthe Duvet, personal maid to the woman who becomes the Duchess of Malvoeux on her marriage to the duke of a beautiful duchy in the Jura mountains of France. Like Camelot, the chateau of the duchy exists out of time: 200 years have passed since the French Revolution, a perilous time for the ducal family when the chateau was sacked and the lands destroyed, but a magic spell has since turned it into a ``fairy kingdom'' where every need is served by ``creatures of magic,'' the weather never varies, and the Baroque palace is filled to the ``rafters with a most sumptuous profusion of treasures.'' A certain Colette, whose short life played a decisive role in the fate of the Malvoeux family, suggests that Berthe write the history of the chateau. And this Berthe proceeds to do, beginning with her childhood in Paris, her service with the young duchess, and their move to this chateau filled with objects collected by a family driven by a passion to possess--a passion that has not escaped the current duke, who collects exotic birds. Meanwhile, French history is also moving at a fast clip, and Berthe adds at length her impressions of those stirring times. She soon learns that there's something dark in the family past. A beggar appears to remind the family of his curse--a curse to be removed only when a white porcelain bird is found. The search is joined, past crimes are finally revealed, the curse is lifted--only to be replaced with a more benign but no less confining enchantment. A dazzling display of period detail, and a slew of authentic- seeming characters--but all disappointingly held in thrall to a narrative that lumbers on to a by-now-longed-for end. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

A mixture of fantasy and historical fiction, this work traces the fortunes of the ducs de Malvoeux during the last days of the ancien regime and the beginnings of the French Revolution. Narrated by the duchesses' devoted maid, it is both a careful portrait of those brutal times and the tale of an ancient curse and a magical quest. However vivid an acccount the author paints of the last days of the aristocracy, she fails to breathe the same life into her characters or the plot, while the fairy story, foreshadowed for so long, comes into play too late to be as integral a part as it should. Of interest to devotees of French history or literature. BOMC selection-- Cynthia Johnson, Cary Memorial Lib., Lexington, Mass.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Dutton Adult
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0525936084
• ISBN 13: 9780525936084
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 416