About the Book and Author [ Edited ]

[Bill_T]

About Sena Jeter Naslund and Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette

Sena Jeter Naslund's illuminating novel Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette introduces the iconic young queen at a pivotal moment -- as the girl of fourteen leaves her family, her country, her home, journeys to France to become the wife of another child, the fifteen year-old Louis the XVI. Suddenly, far from home and thrust not only into the role of woman, and wife, but of Queen, Marie Antoinette experiences an astonishing, if famously brief, existence. The book is based on Sena's impeccable research and though fictionalized, reveals Marie Antoinette as an entirely different person than the one who supposedly said of the starving French peasants, "let them eat cake".

About the Author: Sena Jeter Naslund is Writer in Residence at the University of Louisville, program director of the Spalding University brief-residency MFA in Writing, and current Kentucky Poet Laureate. Recipient of the Harper Lee Award and the Southeastern Library Association Fiction Award, she is editor of The Louisville Review and the Fleur-de-Lis Press. She is the author of the novels Ahab's Wife, Four Spirits, and Sherlock in Love and a collection of short stories, The Disobedience of Water. She lives in Louisville, Kentucky.

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Message Edited by LitEditor on 08-15-2007 02:28 PM

[ampbritish]

I just received my copy of the book today. I read up to a( mistake at the chateau de la muette). I never realized Marie Antoinette was only fourteen.

[SenaJeterNaslu…]

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ampbritish wrote:
I just received my copy of the book today. I read up to a( mistake at the chateau de la muette). I never realized Marie Antoinette was only fourteen.

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By today's standards she was certainly very young for marriage, though of course we know that teens today are frequently sexually active. The future Louis XVI was only fifteen when he and MA were married.

[gaurang_1982]

Hi, I agree.

[gaurang_1982]

This book is really great.