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Monika Pelz
Die Verschwörung
Jungbrunnen Verlag, August 2005, 280 pp. There is one thing in particular that needs to be said about this book, right at the start: it does not underestimate the intelligence of its young readers. Its setting is France in the mid-eighteenth century, when wit and intrigue rubbed shoulders in the salons, new theories and ideas were propagated by the day, and the Encyclopaedists were cheerfully occupied in sapping away at the foundations of the world in which they so comfortably lived. Denis Diderot, their livest wire, wrote, among much else, a spoof novel, La Religieuse, about an illegitimate girl who escapes from a convent and is now setting down her terrible experiences. Though the prank was intended just to wind up a credulous friend, the girl did exist, and now she reappears, in doubly fictional guise, as Marguerite de Brienne, heroine of this scintillating cross-over tale. Like her original, Marguerite is illegitimate, the natural daughter of the villain of the piece, Gaspard de Brienne, who has brutally raped his mother-in-law. She is a Cinderella figure made to slave for her mean-minded relatives, and is at one point herself packed off to a convent. But luck is on her side. Though denied education, she is naturally intelligent and is taken up by the famous Madame du Deffand, queen of the intellectual salons, who learns of Diderot’s trick and brilliantly uses her ‘niece’ to turn the tables on him, producing her as the real nun. Among the salon’s frequenters is the dashing young poet Marmontel, with whom Marguerite falls unhappily in love, but all ends well, she is reunited with her childhood sweetheart, and they set out for America to help Benjamin Franklin, Marguerite having discovered that her smart new world has nothing more to offer than that of her upbringing.
If there is no glass slipper, this mix of Cinderella and
a toned-down Les Liaisons dangereuses glides along as
briskly and glitteringly as any glass coach. Is it a winner?
Oh, yes it is! Encore!
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