Little by Edward Carey

The wry, macabre, unforgettable tale of an ambitious orphan in Revolutionary Paris, befriended by royalty and radicals, who transforms herself into the legendary Madame Tussaud.

In 1761, a tiny, odd-looking girl named Marie is born in a village in Switzerland. After the death of her parents, she is apprenticed to an eccentric wax sculptor and whisked off to the seamy streets of Paris, where they meet a domineering widow and her quiet, pale son. Together, they convert an abandoned monkey house into an exhibition hall for wax heads, and the spectacle becomes a sensation. As word of her artistic talent spreads, Marie is called to Versailles, where she tutors a princess and saves Marie Antoinette in childbirth. But outside the palace walls, Paris is roiling: The revolutionary mob is demanding heads, and . . . at the wax museum, heads are what they do.

In the tradition of Gregory Maguire's Wicked and Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus, Edward Carey's Little is a darkly endearing cavalcade of a novel—a story of art, class, determination, and how we hold on to what we love.

A delightfully macabre retelling of Madam Tussaud's life. One thing to note is that since this is still the tale of an actual human life, as eventful as it was, the story doesn't really follow a traditional story structure. Which meant that I made a long pause in the reading around the middle of the book due to its pacing. But once I picked the book back up, it didn't take long to dive back in - Edward Carey knows what to do with words.

Torn between 3 and 4 stars, since the writing was top-notch, regardless of the midway slog. I never realised how fascinating and eventful Madam Tussaud's life was.

This book! This book ... I was going to love this book. It was one of my most anticipated releases back in 2018, and I held off reading it. I was worried my extremely high expectations would not be met ending in disappointment. Fast forward two years .... my expectations were not met, ending in disappointment.

Having said that - you may love it. It's a largely fictionalized account of the early life of Madam Tussauds, her experience in Paris , Versailles and a tumultuous ride through the French Revolution.

To quote a GR friend's review that I recently read he described a book as “.....an unusual choice for me but I was really impressed with it.” Indeed, I felt the same about this strange novel, Little by Edward Carey. It is certainly a pleasant surprise for this reader and is another gift from the magnificent neighbour libraries (Free Little Library) that I continually wander past each week. I may not have ever thought to read this once upon a time. An unusual choice.

I had recently listened to a podcast on the French Revolution, something I knew little about, and found myself fascinated. I must read more, I mused. When going for a walk a while back and checking a neighbourhood library to see what gems I could maybe find, this was of interest. Odd line drawings on the front cover of body parts, a quote by Margaret Atwood making praise about it being narrated by Madame Tussaud and one quote saying it was “unique”. A quick flick through and there is more drawing and I can see there is made mention of revolutionary France, voilà! Possibly read when I eat my lunch at work, I thought. What worse than to peruse a chapter or two and return it if it went nowhere? Return it I will, but with hope that the next person that picks this up will enjoy it as much as I did.

This is an imagined autobiography of Maria Grosholtz. Maria tells her story from birth until her move to London later in life. From her being orphaned as a child and with that beholden to a wax artist by the name of Curtius (who treated her well without him actually realising it), through to both of them moving to Paris, their trials and tribulations of living in poverty and onto early success then downfall later during The Reign of Terror on Paris 1793/94 makes a story well told. Author Edward Carey has supplied finely placed drawings throughout that add something different to his very readable writings as Maria in the first person. In this reviewer's opinion this is a very clever novel as not once did I feel anything other than it being a female telling her story. Also, impressive was the ability of the author to weave historical figures in and out of the story, that had me running to see if they actually existed or not. As an example, check out Louis-Sébastien Mercier and his bestselling novel of the times as read by Louis XVI that was named according to wiki..........
“L'An 2440, rêve s'il en fut jamais (literally, in English, The Year 2440: A Dream If Ever There Was One; but the title has been rendered into English as Memoirs of the Year Two Thousand Five Hundred or Memoirs of the Year 2500, and also as Astraea's Return, or The Halcyon Days of France in the Year 2440: A Dream)”

There are many more historical figures of those times that appear in this well told tale, but then there are others who are figments of the imagination. A fine blend of the fact of the time and the imagination of an author is this novel.

Recommended to anyone that likes their novels imaginative.