Abundance

I first got interested on Marie Antoinette when Kirsten Dunst's movie came out. I read in a few blogs about the positive reviews on the movie and on Kirsten Dunst as Marie Antoinette. I wasn't able to see it but was determined on getting my hands on a DVD copy. But as I don't really spend so much on DVD's I wasn't able to get it when it first came out. My brother kept on telling me it's not available in his "suking DVD rental place". While waiting to get my hands on a copy I indulged in reading this PBS site on her. But a few months ago Astrovision went on sale and I was able to finally buy my copy and watch the movie. I'm not really a fan of Kirsten but she was amazing in that movie. It's like she was really the fourteen year old Dauphine when she came to France. She was mesmerizing. Of course there was "Making of" in the special features of the DVD. Sofia Coppola mentioned there that she wasn't really making an accurate historical film on Marie Antoinette but that she was just trying to tell her story.

Anyway, I was already reading a book that's supposed to be next on my book list but I chanced upon this book Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette when I went to Powerbooks when they had their sale last July or August (Another sale! Got my copy for P99!). The author, Sena Jeter Naslund, wrote it in the first person - that way you're reading the events on Marie Antoinette's life as if you are her and it is happening to you. You get to know her from her journey to France to marry the Dauphin up to the last minutes of her life when she was getting ready to go to the guillotine. You feel elated when their marriage is finally consumated and feel sad at the death of her children. Among the personalities surrounding the queen, Count von Fersen intrigues me the most. Was he really her lover or just a really really close friend? In the book, there were no accounts of them making loving or even kissing, but Marie Antoinette loves von Fersen in a way different from her love to the king. It's almost as if she thinks/feels he is her soulmate. There were some pages in the book that made me real sleepy but there were more things to love about it. I love the chapters where Marie Antoinette writes to her mother and her mother writes to her. It made me miss letter writing. Imagine the days when we had to wait for a few days or even weeks before we get any letters from our loved ones. I love that the book showed Marie Antoinette's feelings for the people around her (although some of these might just be assumed by the author). I guess it made Marie Antoinette even more real and not just someone who lived in the distant past and we get to read in history books. This book just made me fall in love with Marie Antoinette more.