Madame Tussaud by Michelle Moran, Book Release-February 2011.

One of my favorite author's Michelle Moran has a new book soon to be released in February 2011. Can it really be only three months till February?

Madame Tussaud takes place during the French Revolution. I just finished reading Revolution, by Jennifer Donnelly (review forthcoming), also from that time period. The French Revolution has always fascinated me. I think my passion for this historical setting began when I read A Tale of Two Cities, by Dickens. I vividly recall scenes from this novel that I read in high school, and the impressions have remained with me all my life.

I was so thrilled to read that Michelle Moran has written a book about Madame Tussaud. I love the cover don't you? I have read Michelle Moran's other books, always exciting and educational. I am surprised she has journeyed away from Ancient Rome, but I am delighted. I can't wait to read Madame Tussaud.

Synopsis from Michelle's Blog

"The world knows Madame Tussaud as a wax artist extraordinaire…but who was this woman and how did she become one of the most famous sculptresses of all time? In these pages, her tumultuous story comes to life as only Michelle Moran could tell it. The year is 1788, and a revolution is about to begin…

Marie Tussaud has learned the secrets of wax sculpting by working alongside her uncle in their celebrated wax museum, the Salon de Cire. From her popular model of the American Ambassador, Thomas Jefferson, to her tableau of the royal family at dinner, Marie’s museum provides Parisians with the very latest news on fashion, gossip, even politics. Her customers hail from every walk of life, and when word arrives that the royals themselves are coming to see their likenesses, Marie never dreams that the king’s sister will request her presence at Versailles as a royal tutor in wax sculpting. Yet when a letter with a gold seal is delivered to her home, Marie knows she cannot refuse—even if it means time away from her beloved Salon and her increasingly dear friend, Henri Charles.

As Marie becomes acquainted with her pupil, Princess Élisabeth, she is taken to meet both Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI, who introduce her to the glamorous life at court. From lavish parties with more delicacies than she’s ever seen, to rooms filled with candles lit only once before being discarded, Marie steps into to a world entirely different from her home on the Boulevard du Temple, where people are selling their teeth in order to put food on the table.

Meanwhile, many resent the vast separation between rich and poor. In salons and cafés across Paris, people like Camille Desmoulins, Jean-Paul Marat, and Maximilien Robespierre are lashing out against the monarchy. Soon, there’s whispered talk of revolution…Will Marie be able to hold on to both the love of her life and her friendship with the royal family as France approaches civil war? And more importantly, will she be able to fulfill the demands of powerful revolutionaries who ask that she make the death masks of beheaded aristocrats, some of whom she knows?

Spanning five years from the budding revolution to the Reign of Terror, Madame Tussaud brings us into the world of an incredible heroine whose talent for wax modeling saved her life and preserved the faces of a vanished kingdom."

© [Wisteria Leigh] and [Bookworm's Dinner], [2010].

Review & Interview-The Disappearance

The Disappearance
by Efrem Sigel
Permanent Press (February 1, 2009)
264 pages











The Disappearance by Efrem Sigel's is a divergent story within a story. Joshua and Nathalie come home after a morning running errands and discover their 14-year old son Daniel is not at home. After a short while they realize he is missing and they are frantic with desperation, not knowing what to do. He has vanished without any clues. They must face the hours, days, weeks -- and perhaps more — of tortuous tension while they wait for any positive word about him. The story is a mystery of what happens to Daniel, but it is also a story about his parent's relationship.


What happens to a marriage when something so gut wrenching occurs? How does a couple cope with such dismal despair? As the weeks go by Nathalie and Joshua cope differently, isolating and insulating their feelings. No longer able to support each other, they aren't even aware of one another as they are hidden behind a victim's veil. Sigel uses densely polished poetic lyrical verse. His sensitive style is beautiful, and through his artistry and details you are able to empathize with Nathalie and Joshua as they face an uncertain future. The Disappearance is a rhythmic roller-coaster of emotions.

Here is an interview I recently had with Efrem Sigel about his book The Disappearance.

Wisteria: The disappearance of a child is such a tough subject. Were you afraid it would scare readers away from the book?



Efrem: The book begins with the disappearance of 14-year old Daniel Sandler, but my hope was always that The Disappearance would be more than just another “child disappears, who did it?” mystery. The mystery is there, of course, but it’s also a family drama, the story of a marriage, a story about how ordinary people can either surmount, or be defeated by, extraordinary and tragic events. If it works, it’s because in the end it’s more a love story on multiple levels than a tragedy.



The way you portray the parents, Joshua and Nathalie, seems to make their emotions so palpable to readers. How did you do this?

I knew that I needed fully fleshed-out and believable characters to make the novel work. Joshua and Nathalie are such different people, one impulsive and action-oriented, the other cerebral and withdrawn, that it was inevitable they would react to this calamity in very different ways. Out of these differences, and the spiraling tension caused by the mystery, I hoped to develop a momentum that would drive the story while enhancing the reader’s understanding of and identification with the characters.

A book about such an emotionally charged experience leads to the natural question: has anything like this happened to you?

No. But as a parent I know the fears that engulf you when a child is not where he or she is supposed to be, and I tried hard to get inside the heads of parents actually living through such an ordeal. By the end, I felt as if I were living through it myself.


Was the ending of the book what you had in mind from the outset?

Yes and no. I knew what had happened to Daniel, though not why, but the ending that I wrote early on quickly got discarded, and it took quite a while to find the ending that felt right.

What made you pick such a tiny town as Smithfield as a setting for the book?

It’s a setting I know well, a bucolic small town in rural Massachusetts, the kind of place where nothing ever happens. The contrast between the idyllic setting and the terrible event is another source of tension in the story, as is the fact that the Sandlers are outsiders in this town.



The Disappearance is your second novel, but it comes 36 years after the first. Why the long wait?

In between novels I started and ran a couple of business newsletter companies, wrote magazine and newsletter articles and nonfiction books, but was always exploring ideas for new fiction. Ten years ago I was able to return to fiction in a serious way, first with short stories and then with the idea that turned into The Disappearance. I’m hard at work on a new novel, and will do my best to see that it won’t take another 36 years for number three.



More information about Efrem Sigel and The Disappearance is available at www.efremsigel.com

Sunday Salon, Review Agincourt, by Bernard Cornwell

Sunday Salon...Saturday Night Version...

Thanks for those who asked about Mystery, she is doing quite well. However, her brother Webster needed stitches Friday after injuring his leg on ice. This ice in CT is really messing up my greyhounds. They don't understand the command "SLOW". LOL
He is eleven and a bit of a grumpy old man right now. Poor thing is normally the comic of the pack. He just thinks he is so cool right now because they put a camouflage wrap on his leg.
So out of four dogs I have one with all four legs working. But they sure are cute.

Reading this Week:

I've been doing a lot of reading this week, finishing up:

The Color of Lightning by Paulette Jiles (ARC from HC)You will linger and savor the language shaping landscapes so picturesque they breathe life!!

Soul Enchilada by David Macinnis Gill is a riotous debut!!
Look for the full reviews this week.

Canvey Island Early Reviewer/Library Thing ARC

Agincourt, by Bernard Cornwell.