description: The French Revolution has been a rich storehouse of material for English-language novelists ever since Dickens, full of compelling characters, operatic plotlines, and thoroughly modern moral dilemmas. The poet and novelist Marge Piercy seems to be trespassing on Dickens' territory with the parallelism of her title (remember "the best of times" and "the worst of times"?) but she creates an even broader canvas and attempts, with varying success, to bring historical characters to Robespierre, for instance, is identified simply as Max. The narrative plunges headlong into the Terror, as Piercy spotlights the heretofore neglected women of the Republic. An old-fashioned historical page-turner, this novel could bring the events following the fall of the Bastille to life for a new generation of readers.
language: English
title: City of Darkness, City of Light
titlecomplete: City of Darkness, City of Light
characters: Maximilien Robespierre, Madame Roland, Pauline Leon, Claire Lacombe, Louis Antoine de Saint-Just, Camille Desmoulins, Georges-Jaques Danton
genres: Literary Fiction, France, Fiction, Womens, Historical Fiction, War, Historical, 18th Century, Novels, French Revolution
ratings_count: 1271
places: Paris
publisher: Penguin