Eruditon or pretentiousness by Vivien Teasdale

Whilst volunteering in the library, I was given a book with the suggestion that it should be put forward for the reading group. The book was ‘How to Ruin a Queen’ by Jonathan Beckman. The reviews described it as a ‘rollicking whodunit’; ‘a terrific tale’, ‘Beckman tells this scarcely believable story with flair’.

It’s actually a history book, not fiction, relating events surrounding Marie-Antoinette and the French Court. When reading this book, you also need an extremely good dictionary to hand to be certain of fully understanding such literary ventures as:

‘His lack of resolve deliquesced into  self-destructive generosity’, or ‘the marquis’s face torqued itself incredulously’.Would you want to be described as a ‘milquetoast nonentity’?

It’s always good to stretch our vocabulary and perhaps mine isn’t as good as other people’s, but it made me think: what is the point of writing, whether it’s fiction or fact?

Firstly, I suppose we do it because we enjoy it, so perhaps Mr Beckman enjoys using extremely literary language (or perhaps he just enjoys using a thesaurus) regardless of who might be reading the book. But as Andrew said at one meeting ‘everything is for the reader, not the writer.’

Secondly, we write to communicate. For that we need to know our audience. If the audience for this book is limited to those who can read it without recourse to a dictionary, then it’s a hit, but in that case, should it be in a general public library?

If the audience was expected to be Joseph Public (slightly posher and better educated than his cousin, Joe, but not by much) then surely fewer break-teeth words would be more appropriate? Instead of ‘The peers … had recused themselves …’ why not just say they’d disqualified themselves, which is all recused means. Instead of referring to ‘the monitions of the Brunswick manifesto’, couldn’t he have just used that good old English word ‘admonitions’? It’s longer and almost as posh. Why use an archaic ‘parlously’ instead of perilously, or pusillanimous instead of timid? Why labile instead of unstable?  And if anyone really knows what he means by describing Marie Antoinette as a ‘steepling bulwark’ because she blocked the ambitions of Cardinal de Rohan, please let me know. I’m assuming he means she was confident, or possibly evil, but whether she was in the habit of steepling her fingers, I’ve no idea.

Is it a good book? I’m finding it interesting and enjoyable to read, despite the constant breaks for research.  I’m extending my vocabulary and revising quite a few words which I know but sometimes need to check and I now know what a Mansard roof is when I see one.  It’s well researched, probably factually correct, and covers a little known aspect of French history. Is it ‘good’? I think that depends on what you want from a book, whether you want simply to be entertained or to stretch your brain, which it certainly does. 

Still, I felt ever so slightly smug when I found Beckman’s own description of the book beginning ‘It explores how history is comprised of the stories told by its participants …’, for, as we all know, this is shockingly bad grammar – and from a Cambridge graduate with double first in English, too. Oh, tut, tut!