![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Title: Madame de Pompadour: Sex, Culture, and Power
Author: Margaret Crosland
Genre: Biography
Thingummies: 1.5
Synopsis: Bouregois girl has sex with the king. The end.
Thoughts: Throughout this book, the author refers to many other interesting books about Madame de Pompdour, some primary sources but mostly not. Several times, she also declares that a topic would make an excellent book.
Unfortunately, I wasn't reading any of those books.
This isn't getting a one star review because as far as I can tell, it's factually accurate and not completely illiterate. That said--it's just plain badly written. The sentences are kind of graceless, the paragraphs are frequently a bit disjointed, and the author is incapable of creating tension despite the fact that her subject's life is full of drama. We're talking about someone in a torrid love affair with an incompetent king, who had multiple houses and amazing dresses, and yet somehow we manage to avoid costume or house porn, emotional stakes, or serious political criticism. What we do get is a bunch of sidebars like you used to see in your middle school history textbook (seriously, with headers and on different colored pages and everything) containing information that the author couldn't figure out how to shoehorn in. This despite the fact that every couple pages is a diversion that has little to do with the story of this woman's life.
Boring, clunky, and surprisingly amateurish. But mercifully short?
Author: Margaret Crosland
Genre: Biography
Thingummies: 1.5
Synopsis: Bouregois girl has sex with the king. The end.
Thoughts: Throughout this book, the author refers to many other interesting books about Madame de Pompdour, some primary sources but mostly not. Several times, she also declares that a topic would make an excellent book.
Unfortunately, I wasn't reading any of those books.
This isn't getting a one star review because as far as I can tell, it's factually accurate and not completely illiterate. That said--it's just plain badly written. The sentences are kind of graceless, the paragraphs are frequently a bit disjointed, and the author is incapable of creating tension despite the fact that her subject's life is full of drama. We're talking about someone in a torrid love affair with an incompetent king, who had multiple houses and amazing dresses, and yet somehow we manage to avoid costume or house porn, emotional stakes, or serious political criticism. What we do get is a bunch of sidebars like you used to see in your middle school history textbook (seriously, with headers and on different colored pages and everything) containing information that the author couldn't figure out how to shoehorn in. This despite the fact that every couple pages is a diversion that has little to do with the story of this woman's life.
Boring, clunky, and surprisingly amateurish. But mercifully short?
