History book but not a Biography
Bewertet mit 2 Sternen
I have been to London only twice so far, but both times I visited Madame Tussauds and was absolutely thrilled by the life-like figures. I also went to the branch here in Vienna a couple of years ago. And would visit any Mme Tussauds again, despite the costly entrance fee. Because after having visited some other wax museums in the US I can attest that the quality of the figures at Madame Tussauds is truly extraordinary and true-to-life.
Excited to learn something about her life I picked up this book - but got utterly disappointed. The things we really learn about Marie Grosholtz are nothing more than one can read on her Wiki page. Two thirds of the book are set in France and focus on the years of the revolution and the following reign of terror. The author spends a lot of time and pages to recall the biographies of some important and of even more not so important people of that time and describes various incidents they were involved in. Marie is mentioned only in passing, when she takes the death masks of famous people like Voltaire, Robesspiere and the beheaded king and queen of France.
To some extend all those historical facts were even interesting to me (I was constantly googling names and events that were mentioned), but 1. I expected a biography on Madame Tussaud and not a book on the French Revolution and 2. it got boring after I was about a third into the book (the book has only 200 pages, but it felt like 500!). All the time new people are introduced into the "story" (and they become less and less important the further we get), and to explain their background the author goes back in time, sometimes repeating events she previously discussed already, and then comes at one point back to the time we were at pages before - only I as a reader didn't always know which time exactly we are at now. Confusing! Also, the whole story was rather an enumeration of (political) events. I would have been far more interested in how the normal people lived there and then, how their daily lives have been, what really brought on their anger with the aristocracy. But no mention of that anywhere in the book, not even of the daily life of Marie. Probably because the author has no information on that part of her either. Tussaud wrote her own memoirs in 1838, but even there she only mentions historical facts and figures and does not share any personal things with the reader (at least that is what the author of this book, Geri Walton, tells us).
In 1802 Madame Tussaud goes to England, so we finally leave the French and their history behind. But unfortunately we don't learn much about Madame Tussaud now either. General facts, like when she opened up her first museum in London, are woven in. But the rest of the pages are again devoted to the lives of the people she modelled - e.g. Queen Victoria or murderers that became part of her notorious "Chamber of Horrors".
So in the end I give 1 and three quarter stars in recognition of the work the gathering of all the historical facts must have been and a quarter of a star for the tiny bit of info on Madame Tussaud.
Ironically, Geri Walton writes about the publisher of Madame Tussauds own memoirs, who also apparently wrote a historical book on her and that time, the following: "Hervé was not a trained historian, he was fascinated by Madame Tussaud's tales. He meticulously recorded them and added events of interest related to the French Revolution, thereby creating what he claimed on the title page to be 'an abridged history of the French Revolution'. Yet, the Memoirs possessed little information about Madame Tussaud and appeared to be more of an attempt to craft a certain image of her for public consumption than to tell her life story." I take this criticism of her on Hervé and give it right back to her, word for word!