This purports to be the diary of Josephine Bonaparte from the time she was a fourteen-year-old plantation owner's daughter in Martinique in 1777 to her marriage to Napoleon in 1796. That's its weakness and it's strength. The weakness, I think, being that diary format. There are novels told in diary form that I've found moving and riveting: Bridget Jones's Diary, Flowers for Algernon, and even, believe it or not, a Buffy novel, Go Ask Malice. I think what all of them have in common are very strong voices and the way the entries show a change in the character. Without a strong personality, diary format can come across as sketchy, with a jerky, stop and go quality, and I'm afraid I found the voice created for Josephine very bland and the voice doesn't vary from inexperienced creole girl to a mature sophisticated woman deeply involved and influential in the the politics of Revolutionary France. I don't feel the story gained from being in diary form or even first person.
The strength? That this is the story of Josephine Bonaparte, and if the story it tells comes anywhere near the historical truth, she's a far more interesting character than I could have guessed. A generous, compassionate woman who took risks to save others against the backdrop of "the Reign of Terror" where she almost lost her own head to the guillotine. The content of her life and the history she lived kept me riveted, in spite of spare, restrained, dare I say dull, writing. The picture of Revolutionary France, that turned into a totalitarian state in the name of "liberty" was fascinating. However, I often found the footnotes in the book of real history more revealing, making Josephine sound more complex and interesting than the voice created for her telling her own story. As for Napoleon, he only enters the story in the last 50 pages or so, and comes across as a rather cold fish, while history (and his surviving letters to her) marks his love for Josephine as one of the great passionate affairs in history--not something that comes across in the book. I admit in the end I'm much more likely as the result of this novel to pick up a biography of her, than the next volume in the trilogy.
