A Far Better Rest

by Susanne Alleyn (Goodreads author!), Charles Dickens

published	July 2000 by Soho Press
binding	Hardcover
isbn	1569471975 (isbn13: 9781569471975)
pages	353
description	A brilliant retelling of Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities. A Tale of Two Cities is the story of Charles Darnay and Lucie Manette, but Sydney Carton ...more [close] A brilliant retelling of Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities. A Tale of Two Cities is the story of Charles Darnay and Lucie Manette, but Sydney Carton is the hero who makes the ultimate sacrifice for love. Sydney disappears from the novel in London and turns up years later in Paris to bring the story to its heartbreaking end. A Far Better Rest imagines his missing personal history and makes him the center of this tragic tale. Born in England of an unloving father and a French mother, Sydney is sent to college in Paris, where he meets Charles Darnay and the other students who will have enormous influence on his life and alter the course of French history-Robespierre and Camille Desmoulins among them. The beauty and kindness of Charles's wife, Lucie Manette, affects Sydney so deeply that he secretly devotes his life to her happiness. Sydney becomes a major participant in the formation of the French Republic at the end of the eighteenth century and a witness to one of the most gruesome periods in history, as the significant people in his life fall to the guillotine. A Far Better Rest is a novel of passion, identity, and history that stands fully on its own. [close]
date added	04-18-07 edit book

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Barbara rated it:

07/02/08

bookshelves: fiction

Read in March, 2008

This was ok. That's about it. It filled my need for "more French Revolution!" without getting me a few hundred pages into Les Mis, only to abandon it due to lack of time when getting to South Africa became foremost in my concerns.

This is one of those spin-off books. It imagines the events in the life of Sydney Carton (from Tale of Two Cities) during the parts of the book where he disappears from the narrative. The bits of this novel that of necessity overlap with the action of Tale...more This was ok. That's about it. It filled my need for "more French Revolution!" without getting me a few hundred pages into Les Mis, only to abandon it due to lack of time when getting to South Africa became foremost in my concerns.

This is one of those spin-off books. It imagines the events in the life of Sydney Carton (from Tale of Two Cities) during the parts of the book where he disappears from the narrative. The bits of this novel that of necessity overlap with the action of Tale of Two Cities end up being a bit tedious, because, ok, I had just read Tale of Two Cities. The changed perspective in these parts of the narrative really didn’t add anything for me. I’ve ready plenty of novels & stories where shifting the telling of the same event to a different perspective adds new layers of meaning. This one didn’t really do that for me.

The bulk of the book is taken up with newly invented events, assuming that Carton moved to Paris and established himself in the middle of the political circles of the day. This part of the narrative was most interesting to me because it filled in some details of the political climate of Paris during the French Revolution.

However, I found it a little implausible. If Carton was well-known to such prominent figures as Robespierre, Marat, and Desmoulins, he would have been well-known enough in Paris that his likeness to Darnay would not have gone unnoticed. Kind of throws a wrench into the climax of the story. But (as with many historical novels) this author felt the need to thrust Carton into the middle of the action as far as French politics were concerned. I think this is one of the ways Dickens succeeds in the historical novel genre--he focuses on one group of people caught up in the events of history, rather than making them central to those events, or even adjacent to the people central to those events.

There’s a kind of amusing (to me) afterword/disclaimer at the end, which mildly argues that Dickens sensationalized the Terror and that it wasn’t so bad after all. The author compares the number executed during the Terror to the number killed during one of the Napoleonic battles. Small but important distinction that the author failed to draw out: those executed during the terror were, well... executed. Casualties of war are considerably different from executions carried out over a period of days and weeks. Executions ordered following hasty and dubious trials and convictions, I might add.

What I did enjoy in reading this was learning a bit more about the politics surrounding the time period that’s so central in Dickens’ novel. When I finished Tale of Two Cities, I was curious to read more about the same time period, and this novel did that--filling in some of the political details and context very well. While it was interesting for me to explore some additional fictional narrative focused on this historical time period, I wouldn’t exactly recommend this one heartily....less

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Leigh rated it:

06/16/07

bookshelves: french-revolution, novels, war-literature

Susanne Alleyn's sequel to A Tale of Two Cities, filling in the gaps in Sydney Carton's history. Two Cities is my favorite Dickens, and I spent most of my adolescence in love with Sydney, so I loved the idea of this book; not so much the execution. I need to give it a reread to be able to comment in depth (it's been at least ten years since I read it), so consider this "review" a placeholder.

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