I haven't written in awhile, I know. I just finished this novel, Abundance by Sena Jeter Naslund. It's a novel about the reign of Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette. It's told from her point of view.
I read in the author's notes at the end of the book that much of the novel was taken from actual journal entries and letters that were written by her, and only a little of it was speculative, which excited me at first.
However it took me an incredibly long time to finish the novel. It did get to be a little boring, since she seemed so out of touch with what was actually going on. I felt bad for her. The author portrayed her as a victim of circumstances. She was married very young, to a man who was afraid to have sex with her, and was completely unprepared in running a country. She had no idea how to keep up with what was really going on in France and seemed completely oblivious to everything. So, overall, it made for a very boring middle, and I was sighing with relief when I had finally finished the book. I feel as though the author was trying to make you sympathetic to Marie Antoinette's plight, but I just felt like she should've tried harder to understand France and the French's people's needs. Since she didn't really try at all.
I definitely would skip over this one, unless you're a Marie Antoinette fanatic.
